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TOWARDS A LAST- 
ING SETTLEMENT 



TOWARDS A LASTING 
SETTLEMENT 



BY 



G. LOWES DICKINSON, CHARLES RODEN BUXTON, 

H. SIDEBOTHAM, J. A. HOBSON, IRENE COOPER 

WILLIS, A. MAUDE ROYDEN, H. N. BRAILSFORD, 

PHILIP SNOWDEN, M.P., and VERNON LEE 



Edited by 

CHARLES RODEN BUXTON 



Lavenir est a qui le fait 



NEW YORK 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1916 



-3 //* 



'O 



(All rights reserved) 



;io 



PREFACE 

The writers of this book are united in one pre- 
dominant aim : that of securing that a world- 
catastrophe such as the present shall never recur. 
We discuss neither the responsibility for the war 
nor the conduct of it. Our main concern is with 
the broad problems which will inevitably arise 
for discussion both at the settlement of the war 
and for long afterwards. These are the problems 
of nationality and territorial rearrangement, of the 
revision of maritime law, of economic opportunities 
in the colonial world, and, above all, of a real 
guarantee against war, based on general inter- 
national co-operation. 

While offering no final solution, we believe that 
there exists, however little it may as yet be defined, 
a common European policy which would be accept- 
able to reasonable men in all countries, if only 
the present atmosphere of panic and prejudice 
could be dissipated. Already the outline of such a 
policy is discernible behind the thick veil of half 
a dozen censorships, each striving to suppress every 
sign of reason and moderation among the people 
it controls. Our book will help, we believe, to 
make the outline clearer. 



6 PREFACE 

We deal, further, with the reasons why the new 
international system, if it is to provide security 
for the peace and progress of the world, must be 
founded upon the consent, not merely of the 
governments but of the peoples. We touch upon 
some deeper questions which it is impossible to 
ignore in considering the foundations of permanent 
peace — the relation of war, for example, to self- 
government and to the interests of womanhood. 

We do not profess to treat all these vast 
problems exhaustively. Our aim is rather to set 
people thinking upon them, and so to assist in 
building up a public opinion capable of appre- 
ciating and solving them. 

It is natural that there should be many diver- 
gences of opinion among the writers of a book 
covering so wide a range of subjects. We have 
made no attempt to impress upon our book an 
artificial uniformity. Each contributor is respon- 
sible only for the opinions which he or she 
expresses. 

C. R. B. 



CONTENTS 

The Basis of Permanent Peace 
By G. Lowes Dickinson 

Nationality 

By Charles Roden Buxton 

The Freedom of the Seas 
By H. Sidebotham 

The Open Door 

By J. A. Hobson 

The Parallel of the Great French War 
By Irene Cooper Willis 

War and the Woman's Movement . 
By A. Maude Royden 

The Organization of Peace 
By H. N. Brailsford 



PAGE 

9 



37 



61 



85 



in 



131 



147 



Democracy and Publicity in Foreign Affairs . i 7 7 
By Philip Snowden, M.P. 

The Democratic Principle and International^ 
Relations . 
By Vernon Lee 



THE 

BASIS OF 
PERMANENT 
PEACE 



THE BASIS OF PERMANENT PEACE 

By G. LOWES DICKINSON 

WHEN the war burst upon the world, the effect 
upon ordinary people who had not followed the 
course of foreign affairs was first, a shock ot 
incredulity, then a feeling " Never again ! This 
must be the war to end war." As the war has 
proceeded this feeling has become submerged I he 
men are fighting, the women are nursing all are 
preoccupied with the actual events of the cam 
paigns, the hope of victory or the fear of defeat 
In fhe course of the waging of the war the purpose 
of it is in danger of being forgotten. But that 
purpose, nevertheless, lies deep in the hearts ot 
the peoples and animates some, at least, and the 
best, of their rulers. The nations are fighting to 
secure a durable peace. Those at the front have 
not the opportunity to consider the conditions of 
such a peace. All the more, then, is it the business 
of those" at home to do so. If they neglect it, they 
are betraying the men who are risking and giving 

their lives. . , • ■ 

Now, though much has been written and said 
about the war and the peace, very little of it is 
helpful to this main purpose. In all nations the 
object has been to throw the blame for the war 



12 THE BASIS OF PERMANENT PEACE 

upon the enemy, and to conclude that all that 
is necessary is to defeat or to crush him. On 
this line of approach there is no hope of securing 
a durable peace. The causes of war lie deeper than 
the immediate occasions of this war. And a 
peace which should merely register the defeat of 
one or other of the groups of Powers, while leaving 
unchanged the system, the passions, and the ideas 
that govern international politics, would be merely, 
as every previous peace has been, a truce before 
the next war. I propose, then, in this chapter, 
to discuss, not the ten days of diplomacy that 
immediately preceded this war, but the general 
state of things that makes war continually imminent. 
For it is that state of things that we must change, 
if we can, to ensure a durable peace. 

For centuries past the States of Europe have 
been armed against one another, and commonly 
grouped in hostile alliances. Imputed aggression 
on the one side, fear and suspicion on the other, 
have been the motives of international politics ; 
and they have worked inevitably for war. In such 
a state of affairs, beliefs and suspicions may be 
more important than real intentions. For inten- 
tions can never be certainly known, since it is the 
tradition of diplomacy to conceal them ; and though 
every nation asserts the honesty of its own repre- 
sentatives, none credits that of the representatives 
of its rivals. The fear of war may thus produce 
war, even though there be no other cause. That 
is the first point upon which I wish to dwell. 

I will illustrate it from the position in Europe 
during the ten years preceding this war. During 
that period the States were grouped in two hostile 



THE BASIS OF PERMANENT PEACE 13 

combinations : the Triple Alliance of Germany, 
Austria, and Italy on the one hand ; the Triple 
Entente of England, France, and Russia on the 
other. Between these groups was the tension of 
suspicion and fear. Genuine attempts were made 
from time to time to relax it. They failed, because 
of the mutual mistrust. That the Powers of the 
Triple Entente were suspicious of Germany does 
not need demonstration to Englishmen. But 
equally the German Powers were suspicious of 
the Triple Entente. The English reader may be 
inclined to dispute this. He is of opinion, not only 
that the Entente had nothing but defence in view, 
but that the Germans knew and believed this. 
On this latter point I believe he is mistaken. 
The Germans, there is every reason to suppose, 
believed that the Entente was a hostile and aggres- 
sive combination directed against them. The fact 
that they say so will probably not weigh with 
the English reader. But perhaps he may be willing 
to listen to the considered opinions of the repre- 
sentatives of the Power that has suffered most 
cruelly at the hands of the Germans. There have 
been published recently l a series of dispatches 
from the Belgian representatives at Berlin, Paris, 
and London during the years 1907-14. In these 
dispatches the view I have attributed to the 
Germans constantly occurs — that the Entente is 
an aggressive combination directed against Ger- 
many and that it is breaking up the peace of 
the world. Thus, for example, Baron Greindl, 
Belgian representative at Berlin, writes on May 30, 
1908 : — 

1 In the Korddeutsche Allgemeine Zeiiung. 



14 THE BASIS OF PERMANENT PEACE 

" Call it an Alliance, Entente, or what you will, 
the grouping of the Powers arranged by the 
personal intervention of the King of England exists, 
and if it is not a direct and immediate threat of war 
against Germany (it would be too much to say that 
it was that) it constitutes, none the less, a diminution 
of her security. The necessary pacifist declarations, 
which no doubt will be repeated at Reval, signify 
very little, emanating as they do from three Powers 
which, like Russia and England, have just carried 
through with success, without any motive except 
the desire for aggrandizement, and without even 
a plausible pretext, wars of conquest in Manchuria 
and the Transvaal, or which, like France, are 
proceeding at this moment to the conquest of 
Morocco, in contempt of solemn promises, and 
without any title except the cession of British rights 
which never existed. The Triple Alliance has 
guaranteed for thirty years the peace of the world, 
because it was directed by Germany, who was 
satisfied with the political division of Europe. The 
new grouping menaces the peace, because it is com- 
posed of Powers who aspire to a revision of the 
status quo, to such a degree that, to realize this 
desire, they have silenced secular hatreds." 

Baron Greindl, it may be said, had been impreg- 
nated with the German view. Very likely. But 
that view is constantly recurring in the dispatches, 
not only of his successor at Berlin, but of his 
colleagues at London and Paris. Now England, 
now France, now Russia, is represented as the 
danger to peace ; never Germany. The Belgian 
ministers, it will be urged, were mistaken. They 



THE BASIS OF PERMANENT PEACE 15 

may have been. But that is not my present point. 
I do not cite the dispatches as evidence of fact. I 
cite them as evidence of opinion. And I argue 
that, if the Triple Entente could be, and in fact was, 
thus regarded by neutral outsiders, it must a fortiori 
have been so regarded by Germans. We may take 
it, then, to be established that the grouping of 
the Powers produced, on both sides, a state of 
suspicion and fear. Whether on one side or on 
the other, or it may be on both, there were, at 
one time or another, actual aggressive intentions, 
I do not here discuss. I do not believe that we 
definitely know, though of course we may conjec- 
ture and infer. « But even though there never had 
been such intentions on either side, the belief in 
them was enough to produce a situation pregnant 
with war. The war may have been a war of 
nothing but mutual fear. And this possibility is 
not ruled out because, at the last moment, it was 
Germany that made war inevitable. For it may 
have been, and, as I believe, was, precisely the 
conviction of Germany that war was in any case 
inevitable that finally determined her to plunge into 
it. I offer no excuse for her action. But I think it 
has been too much dwelt upon, to the exclusion of 
all that lies behind it. When there is such tension 
as we have described in the European situation, 
some Power or other will always be tempted to 
precipitate the catastrophe, and some Power or 
other will always succumb to the temptation. I 
1 To avoid unnecessary misconception I will say that it is 
not my belief that British policy has been aggressive during 
the period under consideration. 



16 THE BASIS OF PERMANENT PEACE 

ask the reader most earnestly to consider whether 
this is not true ; and for the purpose, to concen- 
trate his mind, not upon the ten days of nego- 
tiation, but upon the whole situation out of which 
that confused and agonized correspondence pro- 
ceeded. So only can he get a true perspective from 
which to view the possibilities of future peace. 
^ And observe, further, the situation made a mutual 
understanding, I will not say impossible, but very 
difficult. For there can be no understanding where 
there is no confidence. And it is precisely con- 
fidence that is lacking among the representatives 
of the States of Europe. They always believe, one 
might say it is their duty to believe, that the others 
are trying to overreach them. Let me illustrate 
this from the efforts made in 191 2 towards a 
rapprochement between Germany and England. 
We have now two accounts of these negotiations, 
the German and the English ; and though these 
accounts do not altogether agree, the main facts 
are plain. The Chancellor (this is the German 
account), believing that Germany was threatened 
by aggression from France and Russia, was 
anxious to secure the neutrality of England 
in case of such an attack. He proposed, 
therefore, that England should pledge herself 
first to absolute neutrality ; then, when this 
was rejected, to neutrality if war were " forced 
upon " Germany. Sir Edward Grey did, in fact, in- 
tend to remain neutral in such a contingency. But, 
as he stated, he objected to the pledge required ; 
first, on the ground that it would be misunderstood 
by France and Russia ; but secondly, because of 



THE BASIS OF PERMANENT PEACE 17 

the impossibility of determining, if war should break 
out, who was the aggressor. Germany might push 
Austria into war with Russia, then come in her- 
self, under her agreement with her ally, and yet 
maintain that the war had been " forced upon " 
her, and that England was bound to neutrality. 
On these grounds Sir Edward rejected the German 
proposal. But he made a counter one. He was 
ready to pledge England " neither to make nor 
to join in any unprovoked attack " upon Germany. 
But now it was the Chancellor's turn to be sus- 
picious. How was it to be known whether an 
attack were "provoked" or "unprovoked"? 
Russia, let us suppose, makes war upon Austria, 
but in such a way that Austria can be plausibly 
represented as the aggressor. Germany and France 
are drawn in. And what is the worth of the 
British guarantee? England will say that the 
German Powers were the aggressors, and side 
with her allies. Some such thoughts, we may be 
sure, passed through the mind of the Chancellor. 
German suspicions were the counterpart of British, 
and appeared to Germans as much justified by 
the situation. And once more, the point is, 
not whether either Power, or which, was plotting 
duplicity. The point is, that duplicity was 
bound to be suspected on both sides. If 
the relations between the States of Europe were 
open, honest, and frank, such situations could 
not occur. As things are, they must occur, and 
they will continue to occur so long as Europe 
continues to be organized as it is. The nations are 
bled to death because they or their statesmen cannot 

2 



18 THE BASIS OF PERMANENT PEACE 

trust one another. There is the bottom fact. And 
it is more important to recognize this fact than 
to spend our time in looking for the criminal 
nation. Such inquiries can seldom be impartial, 
and they divert our attention from the main point. 
Wars proceed from the armed peace. No one 
may want war, and yet war may come. So long 
as there is a system of States, armed one 
against the other, so long as the relations 
of these States are governed by suspicion 
and fear, so long as there is no machinery, 
recognized and generally used, for dealing with 
disputes otherwise than by war, so long will war 
break out, even though neither statesmen nor people 
desire or choose it. 

My first point, then, is that the system of armed 
States which I have described is enough of 
itself to produce war, even though there were no 
other cause than their mutual fear and suspicion. 
And if this be true, if there be only some measure 
of truth in it, then one of the conditions of a 
durable peace is the reorganization of Europe on 
a new principle. How that reorganization might 
be achieved is discussed in a later chapter, and 
to that I refer the reader. 

But it will, of course, be alleged, and with 
truth, that there are other and deeper causes of 
war. Let us, then, consider some of these. 

It is often said 1 of wars, and it is sometimes 
true, that they are wars for freedom against op- 
pression. What does this mean? It means that 
one of those groups which we call nations 
desires to conduct its own affairs without 



THE BASIS OF PERMANENT PEACE 19 

interference, and that some other group desires 
to coerce it. This fact of belonging to such a 
group, with the counter fact of not belonging, and 
not wishing to belong, to another such group, is a 
bottom fact of the contemporary world. Let us 
try to understand its character and limitations. 

In time of peace, in most countries, the con- 
sciousness of the nation, or State, is latent. Ger- 
mans, it is true, have been carefully trained to 
regard all their activities from the point of view 
of the State. They are told to study for the State, 
to invent for the State, to manufacture for the 
State, to trade for the State. Whether really 
they do so or no I do not presume to judge. 
But elsewhere, the life of men passes without 
much direct reference to the , State. What- 
ever objects men pursue, be they low or 
high, they pursue for the sake of those 
objects. If they are merchants or manufacturers, 
they want to maintain and develop their business. 
If they are men of science, they want to discover 
and to apply their discoveries. If they are artists, 
they want to create. If they are teachers, they 
want to teach. If they are preachers, they want 
to improve morals and religion. If they are phil- 
anthropists or social reformers, they want to make 
life better, juster, and happier. In all these 
activities, patriotism is seldom a direct motive, nor 
are they at all necessarily confined to the people of 
one's own State. Trade, by its nature, is cos- 
mopolitan, whatever barriers States may throw 
across its paths. So is science. So, above all, 
is religion, if it be true religion. No Christian, at 



20 THE BASIS OF PERMANENT PEACE 

least, in time of peace, would maintain that God is 
the God of the Englishman or the German but not 
of any other nationality. Thus, in the normal course 
of life, the idea of the State is not, for the ordinary 
man, a motive of action. But let his State be 
threatened, or seem to be threatened, by another ; 
let it be, as he thinks, insulted ; let any kind of 
aggression be suggested upon its independence or 
its honour, and suddenly there flames up in him a 
passion which, perhaps, he never before knew was 
there. This passion is the basis of patriotism. 
According to the whole character, training, and ex- 
perience of a man, it may assume any form, high or 
low. It may find vent in the basest jingoism, or in 
the noblest devotion. Good or evil, or mingled of 
both, it is a tremendous fact. And it is one of 
the facts that lie behind and make possible war 
in the modern world. 

But does it produce war? Do men go to war 
because they are patriotic? Or does patriotism 
flame up because they are threatened by war? To 
judge by the declarations of men, the former never 
occurs, the latter always. Every war is a war of 
defence in the eyes of the nation waging it. It 
may not be so in the eyes of statesmen. Statesmen 
may utilize patriotism to carry out aggression ; 
so, at least, every nation is ready to believe of 
the statesmen of other nations, and even, on occa- 
sion, of its own. But few are ready to admit that 
patriotism of itself would prompt a war of 
aggression or conquest. We must, however, probe 
more deeply behind what we say or consciously 
think, to what our passions really urge. The 



THE BASIS OF PERMANENT PEACE 21 

lowest form of patriotism, and its commonest 
form, is but a larger egotism. Men who are 
insignificant as individuals acquire a sense of 
extended life by belonging to a powerful nation. 
They feel a pride in thinking of the number of the 
population of their nation, the number of square 
miles of their Empire, the number of " black " 
men they vicariously govern. They do enjoy, 
in that gross way, the sense of power. And 
though they might not avow their support of a 
war aimed at domination, they will secretly or 
openly enjoy the fruits of it. If the reader js 
inclined to question this, I would ask him to 
consider what his real feelings were when he heard 
of the conquest of South-West Africa, and what 
he believes to have been the feelings of most of 
his fellow-countrymen. The English insist in 
this war, and genuinely believe, that they are 
fighting against German, not for English domina- 
tion. But how do they feel when, as a matter of 
fact, they acquire territory? They did not go to 
war for it. No ! But they are very glad to 
have it ! 

There is, then, a side of patriotism, as it is 
felt by modern nations, which supports, if it 
does not prompt, wars of aggression. But 
such wars are the necessary presupposition of 
wars of freedom. Both kinds of war spring from 
the same root, the feeling of belonging to a group. 
As a feeling for our own group it prompts wars 
of defence. As a feeling against other groups 
it winks at wars of aggression. Yet, in either 
case, though it be a condition, it is not the maker 



22 THE BASIS OF PERMANENT PEACE 

of wars. For it does not act unless it is evoked. 
And what evokes it are particular situations, 
the handling of them by diplomacy, and the 
appeals made by statesmen, journalists, and 
publicists. There is, indeed, one region in 
modern Europe where a long course of oppres- 
sion has driven the whole mass of the people 
into wars they themselves originate and wage. 
But the conditions of the Balkan peninsula are 
altogether exceptional. And though it was trouble 
there that unchained the present war, the war was 
not, in its origin, for the other States concerned, 
a war of peoples. It was a war of diplomatists, 
soldiers, journalists. But behind these there rallied, 
at the outbreak of the war, the passion of patriotism. 
We must, then, admit that passion to be a con- 
dition of war ; but we cannot admit it to be a 
necessary cause. For, we may urge, let the peoples 
be enlightened, let them be led instead of misled, 
let them be taught the causes and the conse- 
quences of wars, and they would never consent 
to make wars of aggression, and therefore would 
not need to wage wars of defence. The instruction 
of public opinion and, as a consequence of that 
instruction, its growing control over international 
politics, would seem to be the remedy here. And 
that point, too, it is the object of this book to 
discuss and urge. 

But it is not only in tolerating wars of aggression 
that the baser forms of patriotism threaten the 
peace. It is in the refusal to entertain the 
idea of give and take, of reasonable arrange- 
ments, and peaceable settlements between nations. 



THE BASIS OF PERMANENT PEACE 23 

To the Jingo the bare idea of a concession 
to another nation is apt to present itself im- 
mediately as a humiliation. Between himself 
and the individual members of another State 
he can recognize all sorts of relations, moral, 
intellectual, and spiritual. But between his nation, 
acting as a whole, and that other he recognizes 
no relation but that of force. 

A recent illustration will make this plain. Some 
months ago the head-master of Eton, discussing 
international relations, observed that, if these are 
ever to be improved, it must be by the road of 
mutual concessions. Taking as an example a point 
that is sometimes mooted, the internationalization 
of certain waterways, he argued that if we desired 
that regime to be extended elsewhere, say to the 
Kiel Canal, we must be prepared to extend it, 
say, to the Straits of Gibraltar. The advisability 
or the practicability of such a policy is no more part 
of my present argument than it was, if I under- 
stood him rightly, of Dr. Lyttelton's. But observe 
the effect ! From all the press there went up 
a universal cry : " What ! Give up something ! 
We give up something ! WE ! " Journals once 
pacifist rivalled their Jingo contemporaries in 
astonishment, indignation, and contempt. And The 
Times, dismissing the head-master with a vale- 
dictory article of reproof and forgiveness, warned 
him that, though it may be appropriate for the 
head of a great public school to talk " in the 
abstract " of peace, comity, and justice, he must 
never venture to apply any of these conceptions to 
the concrete facts of the British Empire. Now, this 



24 THE BASIS OF PERMANENT PEACE 

spirit is simply a manifestation of corporate 
egotism. It is the brute, unreasoning reaction 
of one Being against another, and! has no moral 
quality at all, still less a good one. It is mere 
instinctive feeling, as independent even of intelli- 
gent calculation of self-interest as it is of any 
higher sentiments. And so long as that feeling is 
the main motive of those who instruct us in politics, 
and while these can count upon an instant and un- 
reflective response in public opinion, there can 
be little hope of any change for the better in 
the relations of States. It is not enough, even if it 
be true, that we have abandoned wars for domin- 
ation. We have to go farther. We have to enter 
with other States into permanent agreements for 
the purpose of guaranteeing peace. And, to do 
so, we have to make, not merely to take, con- 
cessions. The point in which this will come home 
to us is the point of the " freedom of the seas." 
I do not here attempt to elucidate that ambiguous 
phrase, nor to discuss the difficult and vital ques- 
tions which it covers up. But I do urge upon 
the reader that the question is one for discussion 
and negotiation, not for indignant and peremptory 
reprobation. And, in saying this, I have behind me 
the authority of Sir Edward Grey. In his letter 
published in the press on August 26th, while re- 
jecting, as of course, a certain German view of 
what would constitute the " freedom of the seas," 
he adds : — 

" Freedom of the seas may be a very reasonable 
subject for discussion, definition, and agreement 
between nations after this war ; but not by itself 



THE BASIS OF PERMANENT PEACE 25 

alone, not while there is no freedom and no security 
against war and German methods of war on land. 
If there are to be guarantees against future war, 
let them be equal, comprehensive, and effective 
guarantees, that bind Germany as well as other 
nations, including ourselves." 

These remarks of Sir Edward Grey are of the 
utmost importance. They show, what is evident 
from other sources, to any one who knows and 
reflects, that the question of the " freedom of the 
seas " will be a vital one at the peace settlement. 
What is going to be the British attitude? Is it 
to be corporate egotism, self-sufficiency, and pride? 
Or is it to be a reasoned consideration at once of 
our own vital interests, and of the equally vital 
needs of that society of the nations in which we, 
too, are included? 

I have taken a concrete example to bring home 
my point. But the example must not be allowed 
to divert the reader from the point itself. What 
I am urging is that the possibility of war 
depends at bottom on the existence in individual 
men and women of the habit of conceiving and 
feeling their State as independent of legal, moral, 
and cultural obligations to other States ; of re- 
senting, therefore, all attempts to develop suoh 
obligations ; and thus regarding it as natural, 
inevitable, and right that disputes between States 
should be settled by war. Now, this attitude of 
ordinary men and women is the greatest obstacle 
to peace. For every attempt to guarantee peace 
implies a willingness on the part of the 



26 THE BASIS OF PERMANENT PEACE 

nations to submit their national causes, first, to 
the rules of a common and recognized morality 
and law ; secondly, to formal institutions for the 
application and enforcement of those rules. This 
is true of every conceivable scheme, from the 
loosest and freest league to a complete system of 
international government. There need be, and 
should be, nothing in any such schemes incompat- 
ible with the true interests of nationality, nor with 
the genuine and desirable autonomy of States. 
Internationalism does not attack the feeling " We 
belong to ourselves." It attacks only its perversion, 
" We do not belong to you." And this point goes 
very deep. The future of civilization after this war 
will depend upon the decision of the question 
whether it is their independence or their inter- 
dependence that the nations will stress. The 
former course leads to a series of wars, the latter 
to peace. The issue is even now joined. In the 
passion of war there are those who urge, and 
apparently with conviction, that national excellence 
and security lie in the completest possible isola- 
tion ; in excluding foreigners and foreign trade ; 
in exaggerating and perpetuating national differ- 
ences and national antagonisms ; in fostering, as 
the chief good, national egotism. That way lies 
the ruin of Western civilization. For everything 
that makes for civilization is international. The 
nations of the West are far more alike than they 
are unlike, and their points of likeness are much 
more important than their points of unlikeness. 
Not only materially but spiritually every nation 
is poorer by breach of contact with any other. The 



THE BASIS OF PERMANENT PEACE 27 

sole point in which the nations are independent 
is that of government. That they should retain 
their political autonomy is desirable, so long as 
they wish to retain it. And to attempt to bring 
one of them by force under the government of 
another is a crime, as well as a folly. But for 
the growing life of nations, what they need is 
contacts. Nor is it possible to avoid them. The 
ideal of independence, spiritual, moral, intellectual, 
or economic, is as impracticable as it is undesirable. 
But even a partial movement in that direction 
may do much harm. For it must increase mis- 
understandings and points of friction, and so lead 
to further wars. The cause of peace is the cause 
of internationalism ; the cause of internationalism 
is the cause of civilization ; and the enemy of 
all these is " corporate egotism." 

I will not further labour this point. My readers 
may agree or disagree ; I can only state the 
issue. But some, even of those who agree that 
internationalism and peace go together, and that 
both are conditions of civilization, and most of 
those who disagree, may meet me with another 
line of argument. Peace, they may say, may be 
desirable, but it is impossible j for the issue of 
peace or war does not depend upon the will and 
intelligence of man. The course of history is 
determined by " laws," and these are not under 
the control of human volition. States are like 
living organisms. They grow and expand. And 
since there is not room for them all to expand 
indefinitely, they necessarily come into antagonism 
and war. This kind of fatalism is the stock-in- 



28 THE BASIS OF PERMANENT PEACE 

trade of the champion of war. Here is a char- 
acteristic example from Germany : — 

" So long as England exists as a World Power, 
she will and must see in a strong Germany her 
foe to the death. . . . The war between her and 
us is not confined to such narrow geographical 
limits as the war between France and Germany. 
It turns upon the mastery of the seas, and the 
priceless values bound up with that, and a 
coexistence of the two States, of which many 
Utopians dream, is ruled out as definitely as was 
the coexistence of Rome and Carthage. The 
antagonism between England and Germany will 
therefore remain until one of them is finally 
brought to the ground." l 

Now, the plea of necessity here advanced is 
merely a rhetorical form. It is the passion of 
the writer for the destruction of England and the 
aggrandizement of Germany that suggests the 
necessity of a struggle to the death. Men of 
this type — and they are to be found in all countries 
— think in terms of world-conflicts, because they 
have no other interest in life. It is that way 
that their imagination leads them. And as they 
are often men of powerful will, of high position, 
and of fervid eloquence, they are, and will always 
be, dangerous opponents. Nothing can meet and 
conquer them but conviction equally strong on the 
other side. But this elemental passion is buttressed 
up by theories that are demonstrably false. Pro- 
fessors and journalists and pseudo-scientists cater 

1 Quoted from a Pan-German organ by the Forum of July 
1915, p. 164. 



THE BASIS OF PERMANENT PEACE 29 

like jackals for these lions. And the doctrine of 
a necessary expansion of States leading necessarily 
to war becomes transformed from a formula of 
ambition to a pretended law of history. To fully 
expose these fallacies would require more space 
than is here at my command. But the chief points 
may be briefly indicated. 

What is meant by the expansion of a State? 
Presumably, increase either of population, or of 
territory, or of trade. Are these things " in- 
evitable "? And, if they be, do they lead 
" inevitably " to war? 

Let us take, first, population. In the past, 
the growth of population has gone on without 
the control of will, and may in that sense be 
called " natural " and " inevitable." It has also 
led to war ; because, in early stages of society, 
increase of population necessitates migration in 
mass, and the attempt to settle where other people 
are already settled, and to encroach upon their 
scanty food supply. But in the modern world 
all that is changed. The development and organi- 
zation of industry has made it possible to feed 
an increasing population on a limited area. And, 
if migration takes place, it does not involve war. 
It means merely that producers leave one country 
to add to the productive forces of another. Nor 
is that all. The growth of population is now under 
human control. The birth statistics of all civilized 
countries show it. Population need not increase, 
and, in fact, it tends, in the more civilized countries, 
to be stationary. Whether this is a good or a bad 
thing, or under what conditions it is good or bad, I 



30 THE BASIS OF PERMANENT PEACE 

do not here discuss. It is enough to have reminded 
the reader that, in the modern world, neither is 
increase of population an inevitable fact, nor is 
it, when it occurs, an inevitable cause of war. That 
kind of " expansion," therefore, may be dismissed 
as irrelevant to the argument. 

Let us turn now to territory. The appro- 
priation of territory can, as a rule, only be 
accomplished by war, and usually involves further 
wars to hold it. And this, of course, is peculiarly 
true of appropriations of territory in Europe. It 
may be said, indeed, With substantial truth, that in 
Europe, for centuries past, a principal cause of 
war has been the desire to acquire or recover 
territory. But in all this there has been nothing 
11 inevitable." Annexation is an act of policy, 
amenable to criticism and reason, and for this 
policy there are various motives. Leaving out 
of account the wars that have been waged by 
nations to recover the control of a territory that 
has been filched from them, and confining our- 
selves to aggressive annexation, we may group 
the motives under the headings of power, defence, 
and trade. 

Of these, the most common has been the 
love of power, on the part not of peoples but 
of their rulers. And that motive still persists 
among the Jingoes of all nations. The present 
war, for instance, is believed by many people to 
have been caused solely by the ambition of 
Germany to annex territory. However that 
may be, there have been put forward recently 
by influential circles in Germany demands 



THE BASIS OF PERMANENT PEACE 31 

for the annexation in east and west of an area 
of 80,000 square miles and a population of sixteen 
millions of recalcitrant non-Germans. Is there 
anything " inevitable " about such demands or 
about the interminable conflicts that must ensue 
from the attempts to make them good? Clearly 
not. No " vital interest " of Germany dictates 
them. On the contrary, Germans themselves are 
the first to point out the disastrous consequences 
of such a policy, not only to the peace of the 
world but to the German Empire. The whole 
movement for annexation is based on a false con- 
ception of national interest. And the same may be 
said of any scheme to annex to any nation civilized 
populations that have not themselves expressed the 
desire for incorporation. Much of our trouble in 
Europe has its root in such annexations in the past. 
There is no intelligent and well-informed man who 
does not know and admit it ; and who does not, 
further, know and admit that the well-being, not of 
Europe only but of every nation in Europe, depends 
upon the grant of a reasonable autonomy to such 
alien populations as may continue to be included in 
any State. 

Such annexations, nevertheless, it may be 
urged, are rendered necessary by considerations of 
defence ; to " round off " a frontier, to acquire 
strategic points, to secure the command of home 
waters. Observe the circular nature of such argu- 
ments. You postulate the " inevitability " of a 
future war ; and, in order to secure yourself, you 
take the very measures that provoke it. Thus 
the Germans annexed Alsace-Lorraine, largely for 



32 THE BASIS OF PERMANENT PEACE 

strategic reasons, with the result that they had a 
permanent menace on their western frontier. Thus 
the Italians, we have reason to suspect, in order 
to secure the command of the Adriatic, propose 
to annex a population of recalcitrant Slavs, and 
thus to precipitate a war which otherwise need 
never have occurred. On such lines has the 
human mind worked hitherto in international 
affairs. Is it not time that the plain man 
gave some attention to the matter, and began 
to inquire for himself into the principles and 
practice of the " experts " on whose judgment 
he has hitherto been content so passively to 
rely? 

But I shall be told I am omitting the one 
important consideration. It is not mere lust for 
conquest that drives modern nations to annex terri- 
tory, nor is it necessities of defence ; it is the 
" vital interest " of markets and trade. Germany, 
for instance (let us take that case), desires to in- 
corporate Belgium and Holland for the sake of 
outlets for her trade. What ! But already German 
trade passes freely up the Scheldt and the Rhine ! 
It is not necessary to " own " a country in order 
to send trade through it. "No ! But if the 
country be not your own it may always inter- 
fere with your trade ! " It may ! As Austria- 
Hungary, for example, has done with Servian trade, 
as Italy, in possession of Trieste, might do with 
German trade. The fear is legitimate. But on 
what is it based? On no " natural necessity," 
but on human policy. These situations arise 
because nations believe that they can benefit them- 



THE BASIS OF PERMANENT PEACE 33 

selves by hampering other people's trade, and that 
it is right to do so. But they are mistaken in 
thinking that they so benefit themselves ; and, if 
they were not mistaken, they would still be wrong 
so to act ; wrong, in the first place, because it is 
mean and base to try to make other people poor 
in order that you yourself may be rich ; wrong 
because, even if that be not admitted, the policy 
in question is an underlying cause of war ; and 
no supposed economic advantage could balance the 
material and spiritual evils of war. Wherever it 
is claimed that economic necessity compels annexa- 
tion, the answer is, " free trade " or " free 
transit." That is the alternative to annexation 
and consequent war. Who would not really choose 
it, once the issue were fairly and squarely put? 

The same argument applies to the competition 
of nations for markets and concessions in unde- 
veloped countries. Such competition is one of the 
root causes of the friction that leads to war. The 
Morocco crisis illustrates the point. Twice Europe 
was on the verge of war because France was de- 
termined to annex Morocco, and because Germany 
feared (not without good reason) that she would 
pursue there her traditional policy of excluding all 
other nations from the trade and resources of the 
country. And the Morocco crisis was one element 
in the complex situation out of which the present 
war developed. But in that crisis there was 
nothing " inevitable." So far as the economic 
factor was concerned, it was French policy that 
caused the danger, not international competition. 
Let the nations in all such cases not only formally 

3 



34 THE BASIS OF PERMANENT PEACE 

adopt but loyally carry out the principle of the 
" open door " ; let them determine to co-operate 
or to compete openly and honourably in all 
such areas ; and the danger of war from 
that cause is conjured. Human policy, not 
natural necessity, governs the whole issue. 
There may indeed be trade wars in the 
future, as there have been in the past. But it 
will not be because of a historical law. It will 
be because of the ignorance, the stupidity, or the 
short-sightedness of corporate interests, peoples, or 
governments . 

I have said enough, I hope, to indicate to the 
reader how baseless is the assumption that the 
rivalry of nations " inevitably " brings them into 
war. It will so bring them if it is wrongly handled, 
if wrong feelings and false ideas continue to prevail 
in the future as they have prevailed in the past. 
But there is no fatality in the matter. It will be 
as the nations choose and will it to be. Behind 
wars is not a blind necessity, but causes, definite, 
ascertainable, and removable. I have tried here 
to indicate some of the principal of these. They 
and their remedies are discussed more in detail in 
later chapters. Meantime, let me sum up the con- 
tentions of this one. The first and most obvious 
cause of wars is the armed peace itself ; and I 
have suggested to the reader that this cause alone 
would be sufficient. If we could get rid of arma- 
ments and of fear, we might get rid of war. 
The attempt is sometimes made to attack this 
problem from the side of armaments. But in fact 
it seems idle to hope that nations will discard 



THE BASIS OF PERMANENT PEACE 35 

armaments until they feel security. For that 
reason in this book the problem of armaments is 
not separately and prominently attacked. The 
attempt rather is made to show how security might 
be attained. Given that, disarmament would 
follow. 

Security, however, can only be attained by in- 
ternational agreement ; and international agree- 
ment requires the international mind. For that 
reason I have dwelt upon that aspect of nationalism 
which makes it the enemy of internationalism and 
that form of patriotism which expresses itself 
in antagonism to other nations. That there is a 
truer nationalism and a finer patriotism I not only 
admit, I maintain and insist. But that kind not 
only is not opposed to, it demands, international 
organization. For it demands peace and good- 
will ; and these things cannot otherwise be 
attained. I ask the reader, therefore, to 
correct in himself that habit into which we 
have all fallen of regarding the absolute inde- 
pendence of States as essential to their well-being, 
and to modify the feeling which is at the root 
of that habit. So only can he be prepared for 
those concessions to international comity which are 
essential if Western civilization is to be preserved. 
Further, I have urged that just as a true and 
desirable nationalism is not incompatible with an 
organized internationalism, so is the reasonable 
pursuit of national aims and interests not 
antagonistic to the pursuit of similar aims by 
other nations. Nations must compete as indi- 
viduals must ; but they are no more bound there- 



36 THE BASIS OF PERMANENT PEACE 

fore to make war than individuals are to fight 
duels. The aims of nations, so far as they are 
legitimate, are not mutually incompatible. And 
so far as they are illegitimate they ought to be 
abandoned. Political and economic aggression — 
that is, the policy of conquest and of " Protec- 
tion " — is what brings nations into war. These 
policies are mistaken, as much from the point 
of view of the welfare of the individual nations 
as from that of international comity. That the 
growing democracy now coming into control of 
affairs should understand this from the beginning ; 
that it should not be misled by false doctrines ; that 
it should come with a fresh and free mind to the 
consideration of these great issues ; and that it 
should develop an international control of diplo- 
macy, based upon national control in each country 
— that is the condition of a durable peace. The 
aim is neither chimerical nor Utopian. But it is 
opposed by very powerful forces. Some of these 
are traditions and impulses strong in us all ; some 
are false opinions and false ideals ; some are the 
machinations of interested cliques desiring to per- 
petuate strife that they may fish in the troubled 
waters. All these make for war. What makes 
for peace? Not religion, not science, not learn- 
ing J , not education. All these serve war as much 
as they serve peace. There is one only that works 
for peace, that human reason which is also human 
charity. With that white sword alone can we 
prevail. Will the peoples seize and wield it as 
it drops from the hands of those who should have 
been their leaders? Upon the answer to that 
question depends the fate of the world. 



NATIONALITY 



NATIONALITY 

By CHARLES RODEN BUXTON 



The idea of nationality is best examined, not by- 
trying to frame a definition which will fit all the 
facts, but by looking at the facts themselves. The 
definition will emerge later. What lies imme- 
diately before us is a number of peoples who have 
an intense desire to express, in some distinct form 
of government, what they conceive to be their 
nationality. Some, like the Croats, Bohemians, 
Poles, and Finns, have had such a government 
in quite modern times. Others have never had it, 
or had it only in the shape of some transient 
Empire in the dim past. Some want full inde- 
pendence ; some would be satisfied with autonomy 
within a larger unit. Some, like the Italians, 
Roumanians, and Serbs of Austria-Hungary, desire 
union with an existing free State. Others desire the 
creation of a new political entity. With some the 
common bond is identity of language or religion ; 
with others, the belief that they spring from the 
same stock and have shared from time immemorial 
in the same sufferings and achievements. Two 
things are common to them all. They are all 



40 NATIONALITY 

baulked of their hopes, and they are all prepared 
to make untold sacrifices to realize them. 

The nationality principle is merely another form 
of the democratic principle. To the thorough- 
going democrat this should be enough. Here are 
peoples of which the overwhelming majority desire 
a certain political object. Let them have it, he 
will say, provided it does not clash with the 
desire of some larger section which has a right 
to be heard in the matter. And in point of fact it 
does not, as a rule, clash with the desires of any 
such section, but only with the imperialist and 
militarist ambitions of the ruling classes of some 
strong State founded on conquest. 

And democracy, rightly understood, should carry 
us a stage farther. For, whether the claims of 
nationality are reasonable or not, their satisfaction 
is one of the prime conditions of peace, and without 
peace democracy is for ever insecure. If sores 
are left open which cannot be healed without 
further war, then European democracy, however 
brilliant its triumphs, will be founded upon a vol- 
canic crust which may at any time collapse 
into the molten lava. The principal reason why 
democracy has hitherto made so little progress is 
that its march has been so constantly interrupted 
by war. In almost every peace treaty of the nine- 
teenth century the claims of nationality have been 
flouted, and recurring war has been the result. 

But are we to ignore the question whether these 
claims are or are not reasonable? Are we simply 
to accept them as a primary fact like the law of 
gravitation? Not altogether, though to those who 



NATIONALITY 41 

have felt by personal contact the intensity of the 
national sense in peoples deprived of their free- 
dom and unity, and the way in which these great 
words seem to blind them to almost every other 
thought, there seems to be nothing absurd in the 
notion. It is not likely that anything we can do 
or say will make a Bohemian of Prague or a 
Bulgarian of Southern Macedonia reconsider the 
rooted instinct which tells him that his spiritual 
home is a free Bohemia or a free Bulgaria. Yet 
democracy itself must be founded upon the solid 
basis of reason and forethought. If the peoples 
are to work out their own salvation, and co-operate 
with each other in working out the salvation of 
all, they must think. They must take into account, 
not one great fact but all great facts. They 
must not be led by mere sympathy to throw them- 
selves whole-heartedly into the support of a claim, 
however strong, which conflicts with the conditions 
of the modern world. Does the claim of nationality, 
pure and unmixed, conflict with these conditions? 
Will it fit into the new environment, the new world 
which we hope to create for all the peoples after 
the war is over? What does it really stand for in 
human life? What can it give to the world? 
With what dangers, if any, does it threaten the 
world? 

At this point, at which we come to closer quarters 
with our problem, we need to ask ourselves a little 
more exactly what it is. A German newspaper 
writer remarks that Germany would readily give 
up Alsace-Lorraine, Posen, and Schleswig if Russia 
would give up Finland, Poland, Samarcand, 



42 NATIONALITY 

Bokhara, and other places, and England would 
give up India, Egypt, Cyprus, Malta, and Gibraltar. 
Viewed in this light, we are tempted to say of 
nationality what Hazlitt said of the opera, " It 
is a very fine thing ; the only question is whether 
it is not too fine." Evidently no Great Power 
will be prepared to 'accept so wide a definition of 
nationality as that of our sarcastic German. One 
might waste a great deal of time in arguing about 
the border-line of the subject. Let me say, to 
simplify matters, that I rule out, for the purposes 
of the present chapter, the peoples of India, Egypt, 
and Persia. The nationalist movements of these 
countries make a strong appeal to our sympathies. 
There are many Englishmen who are prepared to 
help them forward. But to place them with those 
of the European nationalities would be to misrepre- 
sent the significance, and belittle the force, of the 
latter. I am speaking, then, in the main, of certain 
specific peoples — Alsatians and Lorrainers. Italians, 
Finns, Poles, Bohemians, Ruthenes, Roumanians, 
Serbo-Croats, Bulgarians, Greeks, and Armenians. 
I omit the Irish, on the assumption that some form 
of national self-expression is now assured to them. 

II 

It will be as well to recognize at the outset 
that there are several difficulties in the way of a 
full application of our principle. Roughly, they 
may be divided into two classes — those which make 
the observance of strictly national frontiers incon- 
venient on economic and strategic grounds, and 



NATIONALITY 43 

those which are inherent weaknesses in the principle 
of nationality itself. Let us take these in order. 

Nature, migration, and conquest have disposed 
the population of the world without any regard 
to the best economic units or the most defensible 
boundary lines. The most obvious examples of 
the economic difficulty are the Poles, Bohemians, 
and Hungarians, who do not occupy any point on 
the sea-coast, and who do not possess within their 
own borders a sufficient variety of raw material. 
Tariff walls, again, often run counter to the 
national principle. The producers and business 
men of Alsace-Lorraine have for years past made 
all their arrangements on the basis of the tariffs, 
the markets, the railway, the banking and credit 
systems, and the business connections of Germany. 
The same may be said, in a lesser degree, of the 
economic position of Poland in relation to Russia. 
Some of these difficulties could only be completely 
surmounted by freeing such ports as Fiume, Trieste, 
and Danzig, and the navigation of rivers like the 
Danube, Vistula, Elbe, Scheldt, and Rhine, from 
all restrictions, others by commercial treaties or 
free exchange. 

With regard to strategic questions, there are 
obvious reasons why, in a world dominated by 
the fear of war, the desires of a people for a 
national government should have to give way to 
the exigencies of fleets or armies. Frontiers have 
been settled again and again with a view, not to 
the desire of the inhabitants but to military or 
naval needs. If we are to escape from this 
necessity, we must ask ourselves the question, mu.st 



44 NATIONALITY 

the world be always dominated by the fear of 
war? 

These are difficulties which might conceivably 
be surmounted in time ; but is there not, it may 
be urged, something in the nature of nationality 
itself which is fundamentally opposed to the kind 
of progress we are aiming at? We sympathize 
with an oppressed nation, but when we have set 
it on its feet, does it not become in its turn an 
oppressor, using the arts of its own former tyrants 
with an ingenuity born of long experience? Does 
not " nationality militant," to borrow a term from 
the ecclesiastical world, pass over into something 
odious and repulsive when it becomes " nationality 
triumphant "? In nations that have acquired and 
established their freedom, in France, in Germany, 
and in Italy, is not the very word " Nationalist " 
applied, and naturally applied, to the Imperialist 
parties, which aim at extending the sway of the 
nation over other nations? Is not the desire of 
a successful nation to spread its particular type 
of civilization essentially the same desire as that 
which inspires a subject race to defend its culture 
against that of its rulers? Is not the claim to 
national self-expression invariably followed by the 
claim to world-power? In a word, is not the 
intense desire for national independence, with all 
that it entails, the direct enemy of internationalism, 
that wider conception which must inspire the next 
great step in the progress of the world? 

I cannot answer these questions in a manner 
wholly favourable to the cause of nationality. 
Nor do I wish to strike a balance between the 



NATIONALITY 45 

merits and the demerits of that cause, for the 
factors are very numerous and perhaps in part 
incommensurable, and to think out the problem 
for oneself, unaided and unguided by some one 
else's personal opinion, is perhaps the most useful 
process from the point of view of building up 
an enlightened public opinion. I will content 
myself with pointing out some practical con- 
siderations which have a bearing on the problem. 

When nationalities are mixed in fairly equal 
proportions, as are the Hungarians, Germans, 
Roumanians, and Serbo-Croats of Southern 
Hungary, it is true that the principle of nationality 
is an inadequate guide. But such districts are 
not common, and we are far from having reduced 
our problem to these narrow limits. The ordinary 
case is that of a preponderant nationality with an 
" Ulster " enclosed in it or mixed up with it. This 
case can be met, partially at least, by distinct 
and recognized provisions for the linguistic and 
ecclesiastical rights of the minority in connection 
with local government bodies, churches, schools, 
and other institutions. There is always, no doubt, 
a difficulty in making these provisions effective ; 
in the long run this can only be done by assuaging 
inter-racial hatreds and diminishing the danger 
of war. 

Many of the difficulties which attend the realiza- 
tion of nationality would be avoided if autonomy, 
rather than complete national sovereignty, were 
the object aimed at. There is undoubtedly 
something crude and primitive in the latter claim, 
in spite of the almost axiomatic character with 



46 NATIONALITY 

which long usage has invested it. In point of 
fact, the farther West we go, the more we find 
that autonomy, or a freedom restricted by the 
requirements of some larger political unit, is 
proving a sufficient answer to the national claim. 
Irish history during the past century provides a 
good example of the change from the one idea to 
the other. The farther East we go, on the other 
hand, the more we have to admit the dangers 
and difficulties which spring from the demand for 
unfettered sovereignty. Cruder tyrannies have 
produced a cruder reaction. We cannot blame the 
Balkan peoples for this. It is unreasonable to 
expect them to skip over a stage which has 
hitherto seemed indispensable in political develop- 
ment. But it is probable that even in the East 
nationalist ideas will become increasingly tinged 
by the conception of autonomy. 

Ill 

And now, having faced the admitted difficulty 
of applying our principle without considerable 
exceptions and reservations, we may turn to the 
positive contribution which nationality makes to 
the progress of the world. The matter must be 
looked at from the point of view both of each 
nation and of civilization as a whole. 

To nations in an early stage of development, 
particularly those formerly subject to Turkey, 
nationality stands for many things that we in the 
West have ceased to associate with the term, and 
now value under other names. It means the attain- 



NATIONALITY 47 

ment for the first time of culture, of refinement, 
of education for their children, of the right to 
worship as they think fit. To most subject 
peoples the realization of nationality means the 
realization also of democratic government. The 
two aims are largely inspired by the same feelings. 
In 1848 the French and German struggles were 
mainly directed to the latter, while the Italian 
and Hungarian were mainly directed to the former, 
but neither struggle was exclusively democratic or 
exclusively national. 

So inextricably does the aim of nationality 
become bound up with other aims, that there is 
a tendency to think that none of them can be 
realized until national self-expression has been 
secured, and to neglect the steps which might be 
taken, even under present conditions, to realize 
them. This is especially noticeable in the Balkans. 
The whole energy of the nation, both in thought 
and action, is too often turned into the one channel. 
Nothing else counts. Education, social reform, 
honesty in public life, economic development — all 
lag behind, because all are subordinated to the 
overmastering passion of nationality. 

When it becomes a question, not so much of 
securing self-government and culture but of 
securing a particular type of these things as 
opposed to another type, we are dealing with some- 
thing a little less tangible, the need for which 
is sometimes disputed by political thinkers. The 
members of races subject to Austria and Germany, 
for example, do not as a rule suffer very seriously 
if they are content to live a quiet life apart from 



48 NATIONALITY 

all public interests, to shut themselves up within 
the circle of their family and friends, to follow 
their daily business, and not to take any part 
whatsoever in " movements," whether political or 
otherwise. If they do, then it is a matter of 
police spies, perpetual interference, the suppression 
of newspapers, the imprisonment of editors and 
thinkers and political leaders, the extinguishing 
of every manifestation, however slight it may be, 
of anything distinctively national — flags, meetings, 
exhibitions, processions, pamphlets, songs, and 
books. It means the creation, in a word, of an 
atmosphere intolerably depressing and irritating to 
men with a belief in progress and in human fellow- 
ship. Some will say that the question whether 
a certain type of thought and of public life and 
social habits shall or shall not prevail 1 , whether 
the type shall be French or German, Polish or 
Russian, is not a point worth fighting about. Few 
would say this, however, if they had experienced 
what it means to a people to be denied all political 
and " cultural " self-expression. To Englishmen 
that experience is so remote that they find it 
difficult to comprehend. It is for this reason, 
coupled perhaps with a certain contempt for 
teachers and artists, that we have actually no 
equivalent for the word " cultural," without which 
the Polish or Bohemian nationalist would hardly 
know how to express himself. 

Nationality stands, then, in the mind of a people 
struggling to be free, not indeed for the whole, 
but for a large part, of what we feel to be good 
and desirable in human life. It stands for self- 



NATIONALITY 49 

development and self-expression, in so far as these 
ends require for their realization a wider sphere 
than that of individual or family life — the sphere of 
combination and association, above all of govern- 
ment. It stands for the cultivation of those national 
habits of life and thought which are dearer to us 
than others because they are in a fuller sense 
" our own " — just as family customs and family 
words have a peculiar savour for us, creating as 
they do a whole atmosphere, and calling up, 
without any need of explanatory speech, a hundred 
common memories and familiar ties. This self- 
expression, this cultivation of things so dearly 
prized, is the object upon which a nation's hopes 
are concentrated in the days of its servitude. 

Does the experience of liberated nations justify 
such hopes? Some think not. They point to tyranny 
in Hungary and corruption in Italy. They say 
that the dreams of 1848 and i860 have faded 
into something tame and grey, sordid and dis- 
appointing. Perhaps the disappointment is only 
the fruit of an exaggerated expectation. In South - 
Eastern Europe, where liberation has meant a 
change from disorder to order, and the reclaiming 
for civilization of a desert, no one could possibly 
question the reality of the progress made. But 
even where the change has been less complete 
and striking, there has been a gain. Life is wider 
and fuller for a nation in which the people accept 
the form of the government and co-operate in 
working it. Such a nation is a higher political 
organism than an empire, however vast its extent 
or however overwhelming its power, in which the 

4 



50 NATIONALITY 

citizen is denied the free exercise of his political 
and associative faculties, except in the heated and 
morbid atmosphere of resentment and intrigue. 
There is a gain of inward satisfaction, the removal 
of a sense of wrong. True, a people no sooner 
gains its freedom than it begins to crave and 
strive for something further. Whitman has told 
us that " from any fruition of success shall come 
forth something to make a greater struggle 
necessary." But at least a step on the road has 
been taken, and we in the West, who conceive 
all life as a road, feel instinctively that that means 
an advance to something better. 

IV 

But it is when we take the point of view of 
civilization as a whole, not that of individual 
nations, that we appreciate most fully the value 
of the national spirit. When our grandfathers 
and great-grandfathers were fired with enthusiasm 
for Greece and Italy and Hungary, they conceived 
themselves to be maintaining, not merely the rights 
of Greeks, Italians, and Hungarians, but some 
common and fundamental interest of mankind. It 
is, in fact, to the interest of mankind that there 
should exist the greatest possible variety of types 
of thought and action. The world progresses most 
when it is able to choose between a wide range 
of different courses. Those which are inherently 
good will tend to survive. Those Which are trivial 
or useless will be ignored. No one can judge 
which should be encouraged and which suppressed 



NATIONALITY 51 

—least of all a single imperial Power or a group 
of such Powers. The best chance is to let all 
the varieties bloom and flourish, and to trust to 
the free choice of humanity to take or leave them. 
This, the essential doctrine of Liberalism, is not 
a bloodless abstraction as applied to the matter 
now in hand. What a treasure-house of civilization 
is revealed to us in the national life of our fellow- 
peoples, whether those which have won their 
freedom already, or those whose dreams and hopes 
derive more brilliant colour and deeper emotional 
meaning from the very fact that they are still 
unsatisfied. Just as England contributes her sense 
for political liberty, France her intellectual honesty 
and lucidity, Germany her industry and discipline, 
Italy her aesthetic aptitude, so Finland has her 
advanced democracy, Poland her music and art, 
Bohemia religious independence, the Serbs their 
warm poetic temperament, the Greeks their subtlety 
and their passion for the past, the Bulgarians their 
plodding endurance and taciturn energy, the 
Armenians their passion for education and pro- 
gress. And each of these characteristics is merely 
a faint indication of what is distinctive in the 
people concerned. Peoples are not, in fact, to be 
distinguished from one another by a single mark, 
detaching itself from a background of pure 
similarity. It is the total combination of qualities, 
of historical events, of natural surroundings, which 
makes them what they are— conglomerations of 
various and conflicting personalities and parties, 
touched nevertheless with some unifying character 
which makes even their very divisions distinctive. 



52 NATIONALITY 

National culture may some day give place to 
cosmopolitan culture, but meantime it is a richer 
and intenser thing. The poetry of a nation, for 
instance, gains more from the deep roots of 
national memory and tradition than it loses from 
the political boundaries which fence it from 
the air and sun that might come to it across 
neighbouring gardens. The whole gains by the 
fuller development of every one of its parts. 



It will be noted that the question hitherto dis- 
cussed is that of nationality, rather than that of 
11 small nationalities." The difference in size has 
far-reaching consequences. A large nation may 
be content to rely upon its strong arm' ; but if we 
are to have any hope at all of placing the smaller 
nationalities, in Mr. Asquith's words, " on an un- 
assailable foundation," we must work out some 
system of international relations which will secure 
the right of the weaker State against the aggression 
of the stronger. ,We must, in other words, sub- 
stitute law for brigandage and private defence. 
We must do in the international sphere what the 
woman's movement demands that we shall do in 
the national sphere — recognize that inferiority in 
physical strength shall be no reason for any kind 
of disability. Just as inter-individual war, or the 
possibility of it, precludes the equality of women 
with men, so international war, or the fear of it, 
precludes the equality of small nations with large. 
This shows at a glance the absurdity of supposing 



NATIONALITY 53 

that war in itself— the victory of one group of 
armies and fleets over another — can possibly place 
the rights of the smaller nationalities on an un- 
assailable foundation. It might for the moment 
protect Belgium, or Serbia, or Poland ; but it 
would leave these and all other small peoples in 
the same position as before, so far as security for 
the future is concerned. War, and the fear of 
war, inevitably puts a premium upon large 
centralized States, because large centralized States 
are the best means of wielding force. If a few 
small peoples refuse to yield to this general 
tendency, they do so at their peril. An inter- 
national agreement to prevent war would place 
small nations in a position of security, and nothing 
else would do it. The ideal of the nationalist, 
11 the independent existence and free development " 
of all the peoples, would thus be attained. 

VI 

It is now time to turn to the Great War, and 
to ask what is its relation to the nationality 
problem. Each side claims that it is fighting for 
certain oppressed nationalities. How far can 
these claims be justified? It is as well to look 
first at the belligerent Powers and see how far 
they themselves conform to the principle of 
nationality. We see at once that, from this point 
of view, Austria-Hungary and Turkey stand on 
quite a different level from the rest. It is a 
misuse of language even to describe them by the 
same term as countries like England or France, 



54 NATIONALITY 

Germany or Russia. I include the last two 
Powers because, so far as subject white nationali- 
ties are concerned, they are only offenders to the 
extent of about one-seventh of their population. 
Broadly speaking 4 , they are nations, with a national 
soul and character, while the Dual Monarchy and 
the Ottoman Empire are not nations at all, but 
composite structures formed by the conquest of 
many nations. There is a strange topsy-turvey- 
dom in our popular conception of the war. We 
entered into it, we believe, for the sake of small 
nationalities, yet there is actually a strong current 
of pro-Austrianism and pro-Turkism among us, 
as is shown by the fact that the savageries of 
Austria in north-west Serbia and of Turkey in 
Armenia are usually thrown into the back- 
ground by our press. Historically, of course, this 
current is caused by the sympathy of one ruling 
race for other ruling races, and by the now dis- 
carded anti-Russian policy of the Victorian era. 
It is none the less dangerous from the point of 
view of the interests of nationality. 

The nature and composition of the belligerent 
Powers, then, suggests that in this matter of 
nationality the balance inclines strongly in favour 
of the Quadruple Entente. Nor is this the only 
sense in which we are " fighting for nationality." 
We English may fairly say that we went to war 
for it, in the sense that it was the wrongs of 
Belgium which produced the popular enthusiasm 
for the war. We may fairly add that our ideas 
of self-government, as illustrated in recent times 
by our South African policy and our Home Rule 



NATIONALITY 55 

movement, are far in advance of those of other 
Empires, and that as a people we earnestly desire 
that national claims should receive their due weight 
in the settlement. And this is not all. The 
Quadruple Entente as a whole may be said to 
be fighting for nationality in another sense — the 
sense, namely, that its victory could be made to 
contribute to the liberation of subject peoples in 
a far higher degree than the victory of its enemies. 
In order to illustrate the point let us take certain 
extreme examples. Let us suppose that either the 
Entente or the Alliance were in a position to dictate 
terms. The examples are artificial, but they help to 
clear our minds. Note, first, that there are certain 
nationalities whose position would quite probably 
be much the same in either case — the Poles, who 
would probably gain autonomy, and the Finns, the 
Ruthenes, and the Jews, whose national interests 
would probably not be affected. There remain 
the Bohemians, the Alsatians and Lorrainers, the 
Danes of Schleswig, the Italians of Southern 
Austria, the Serbo-Croats and Slovenes, the 
Roumanians, the Bulgarians, the Greeks, and the 
Armenians . 

Now, a victory for the Entente would 
(assuming that the settlement were inspired by 
nationalist conceptions) satisfy the claims of the 
majority of these peoples, numbering in round 
figures 30,000,000. A victory for Germany, 
Austria, and Turkey, on the other hand, would 
make it almost impossible to satisfy any of them, 
with two exceptions — the Bulgarians of Central 
Macedonia and the Roumanians of Bessarabia, 



56 NATIONALITY 

whose liberation would be more than outweighed 
by the continued subjection of their brethren 
in Hungary. No one supposes that the choice 
is in fact between the freedom or subjection 
of the whole of these 30,000,000. The actual 
choice lies, of course, between much narrower 
limits, because no dictatorship is possible on either 
side. A partial victory would open the way to 
correspondingly partial results. But the broad 
black and white outlines do provide a true picture 
of the issue which was raised upon the tragic stage 
of Europe when the Austrian armies crossed the 
Drina in the summer of 19 14. One might almost 
say that this is the greatest issue of the war, 
if one interprets the word " issue " as meaning 
a point which could really be settled by the war, 
and in all human probability could not be settled 
without it. This is the real sense in which we 
are, if we choose — but only if we choose — " fight- 
ing for nationality." 

How far we are likely to choose this course, 
how far indeed we shall be in a position to choose 
it, even if we desire to do so, is another question. 
In the welter of conflicting interests many things 
that we should have liked to do will be found to 
be out of our reach. The fact is that to engage 
in a European war, and at the same time to be 
punctilious about nationality, is impossible. Such 
a war may begin as a struggle of nationalism 
against imperialism, but it cannot remain so. It 
must inevitably develop into a conflict between rival 
imperialisms. In Central Macedonia our diplomacy 
has led us into the position of supporting Serbian 



NATIONALITY 57 

imperialism as against Bulgarian nationalism ; 
while in Dalmatia, if the universal belief is true, 
we are endeavouring to substitute Italian for 
Austro- Hungarian imperialism, as against the 
national claims of the Serbo-Croat population. No 
good can possibly come of shutting our eyes to 
these incidental results of war. They do not alter 
the fact that there are a great number of cases 
in which we shall still be free from commitments. 
There will be many doubtful issues at the settle- 
ment in which the influence of this country will 
very probably be decisive, and we must make the 
best of these opportunities for helping forward the 
cause of nationality. 

There remains a final point. We are not likely 
to make much of these opportunities if we leave 
the whole matter in the hands of the diplomatists. 
The tradition of the Foreign Offices of Europe 
is wholly indifferent to nationality. It moves in 
an atmosphere altogether alien to such ideas. 
Diplomacy is much more concerned with the tem- 
porary interests of governments than with the per- 
manent interests of peoples. Every peace made 
by diplomatists — at Vienna, Paris, Frankfurt, 
Berlin, Bukharest — has borne testimony to this. 
We cannot take for granted that the statesmen of 
the Quadruple Entente — among whom those of our 
own country will be in the minority — will go out 
of their way to help forward the principle of 
nationality except upon one condition. That condi- 
tion is that there shall be a public opinion, definite, 
alive, not to be denied, which shall insist that the 
principle be applied. Democratic influence in the 



58 NATIONALITY 

settlement of the war offers the only security that 
the interests of nationality will be seriously con- 
sidered. By this it is not meant that every English 
citizen can be expected to pronounce upon the 
exact frontiers of Poland, the rights to be accorded 
to the Hungarian minority in Transylvania, or the 
methods, whether of plebiscite or of impartial 
inquiry, whereby the wishes of any given popula- 
tion should be ascertained. There will be different 
degrees of knowledge, some greater and some less. 
But we ought not to admit the too commonly 
accepted idea that the sister nations of Europe 
can never be more than a name to the English 
democracy — that the aspirations and the main 
characteristics, for example, of a noble race such 
as the Bohemians, with a population one-third of 
that of England, is a mere detail with which 
Englishmen cannot be expected to concern them- 
selves. That would be to admit too narrow a 
range for international sympathy. There is more 
likelihood to-day than ever before that the sym- 
pathy of one democracy for another will be able 
to break through the age-long conventions of diplo- 
matic intercourse. Let us not be tempted to 
despair by the cynic who cites to us, from the past 
conduct of all the governments concerned, painful 
proofs that they have not cared much for nation- 
ality, and that some of them have not even paid 
it the shadowy compliment of lip service. There 
is no practical use in seizing upon this obvious 
opening for scepticism. Let us rather take the 
declarations of statesmen at their face value, recog- 
nizing that the declarations themselves create a 



NATIONALITY 59 

new condition of things, that they oblige the Powers 
which have made them to take steps to realize 
them, and that there are among the statesmen not 
a few who are anxious to have behind them a 
popular demand which will enable them to take 
these steps. It is the duty of the peoples to see 
to it that the declarations of their governments 
are not forgotten. 



THE 

FREEDOM 

OF 

THE SEAS 



THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 

By H. SIDEBOTHAM 

One of the promises of victory is that Great 
Britain will be able to review her whole naval 
policy in the light of the experience gained in 
the war. Sir Edward Grey has himself indicated 
that such a review may be appropriate in the 
negotiations for peace after victory has been won, 
and the object of this chapter is to consider certain 
issues which, though they are usually evaded now, 
may then be in the forefront of political discussion. 
It is known that the United States of America 
are particularly concerned in this discussion, and 
German diplomacy in America has omitted no 
opportunity of presenting its view of the issues. 
Direct defence of German policy in Europe Count 
BernstorfT has hardly attempted ; his whole object 
has been to distract American attention from the 
sins and crimes of German militarism by making 
a more formidable bogy of British sea power. 
That Germany, who in her submarine campaign has 
been guilty of the most atrocious acts of naval 
tyranny in history, should still have been able to 
represent herself as the champion of the "freedom 

of the seas " without being laughed or hissed out 

63 



64 THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 

of court in the United States is a paradox which 
needs much explanation. To leave it unexplained, 
and to persist in ignoring! the existence of a very 
grave problem of policy, is dangerous to the interests 
of this country, of which the maintenance of rela- 
tions of cordial friendship with the United States is 
not by any means the least important. 

The ideal of the " freedom of the seas " is too 
fine to leave in the hands of the Germans. The 
meaning of the phrase has greatly changed since 
Grotius more than three hundred years ago wrote 
his " Mare Liberum," to vindicate the right of the 
Dutch to trade with the Indies, and to combat the 
pretensions of the Portuguese to a monopoly of the 
seas that they had been the first of Europeans to 
traverse. The sea captains of Elizabeth had com- 
bated the similar pretensions of the Spanish. The 
sea policy of the Stuarts, however, asserted a definite 
British sovereignty over ( the Narrow Seas against the 
Dutch, and in 1618 John Selden wrote his " Mare 
Clausum," in which he argued against Grotius that 
there could and should be a national sovereignty of 
the open seas precisely similar to sovereignty of 
land. That controversy ended in the triumph of the 
view of Grotius, and, indeed, if he had not 
triumphed British maritime supremacy, which neces- 
sarily by its ubiquity transcends the ideas of 
territorial sovereignty, could never have come into 
being. The seas are now free, economically and 
politically, in peace time, and the chief survival 
of Selden's contentions is the doctrine of terri- 
toriality within three miles from low- water mark. 
In securing this freedom of the seas England has 



THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 65 

taken a leading part, and any attempt to shackle 
their freedom with the doctrine of territorial 
sovereignty would find England at the head of 
a coalition prepared to go any lengths in resistance. 
But the freeiom now in question is the freedom, 
not in peace but in war. It is a war problem 
pure and simple, and the conditions that pre- 
vail in peace-time have no sort 05 relevancy. 
England, for example, which admittedly is the pro- 
tagonist of its freedom in peace time, is, in the 
opinion of her critics, its most powerful opponent 
in war. The " Mare Clausum " of Selden's day has 
waited nearly three centuries to reappear in British 
naval practice in the Proclamation closing the 
North Sea to shipping which was issued as an 
answer to the indiscriminate sowing of mines by 
Germany on the high seas. 

The outbreak of the war found our Navy in 
overwhelming material strength and in a high 
state of technical efficiency. But it also revealed 
hesitancy and uncertainty in certain departments 
of controlling policy. No navy was ever readier 
to fight a fleet action, and (a few accidents apart) 
it had carefully worked out the problems of de- 
fending our shores from invasion and raid and 
of securing our sea-communications. Its attack, 
however, against an enemy who persisted in 
declining a fleet engagement was only an equivocal 
success. In particular, its blockade of the enemy's 
coasts and the strangulation of his commerce were 
for long enough very partial and hesitating. This 
hesitancy contrasted markedly with our maritime 
policy in the war with Napoleon. Then we had 

5 



66 THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 

no doubts whatever ; we asserted the right to 
confiscate all enemy's property at sea, whatever 
the flag under which it was being carried. The 
d'ctrSe that a neutral flag might protect enemy s 
property which was then put forward by the 
Armed Neutrality was indignantly repudiated. 
"Shall we" asked Pitt in 1801, referring to the 
docSe of the Armed Neutrality, "give up our 
Maritime consequence and expose ourselves to .scorn 
to derision, and contempt? No .man en deplore 
more than 1 do the loss of human blood the 
calamities and distresses of war ; but will you 
Uently stand by and, acknowledgmg these ^ mon- 
strous and unheard-of principles of neutrality, 
nTure your enemy against the effects of your 
hostility ! Four nations have leagued to produce 
a new code of maritime law which they endeavour 
arbitrarily to force on Europe ; what is this but 
tne same Jacobin principle which proclaimed the 
Rights of Man, which produced the French Revo- 
En which generated the wildest anarchy and 
spread terror & and devastation through that un- 
hapov country? Whatever shape it assumes, it 
?s P a rioTation of the rights of England, and 
imperiously calls upon Englishmen to resist it even 
to the last shilling and the last drop of blood, 
rather than tamely submit to degrading conse- 
quences or weakly yield the rights of this country 
rshameful usurpation." The passage illustrates 
he law of history that the more violent the asser- 
tion of a principle is in the one generation the 
more ikely is its repudiation in the next. Fifty 
yeTrs later by the Declaration of Paris we accepted 



THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 67 

the principle which Pitt was prepared to shed the 
last drop of English blood to resist. The Declara- 
tion was a great weakening of belligerent powers for 
the sake of neutral right, a sacrifice of the offence 
to the defence. The effect of that Declaration was 
that though the belligerent's flag might be chased 
from the seas, his trade could not be so long 
as there was a neutral ship in which it could be 
carried. 

That was not all. More than fifty years after 
the Declaration of Paris the Declaration of London 
entrenched neutral rights still more strongly. It 
drew up a " free list " of articles which a belli- 
gerent could (so long as there was no blockade) 
import through his own ports in neutral ships and 
through neutral ports, if his own ports were 
blockaded. In this list were many articles of use 
in war, such as cotton. Further, there was a list of 
articles of conditional contraband, which could not 
be stopped except on evidence that they were in- 
tended for the use of the belligerent Government. 
If there was evidence that they were so intended, 
importation through a belligerent port, even under 
a neutral flag, might be stopped, but not importa- 
tion through a neutral port. It followed from 
these two rules, to take concrete examples, that 
cotton in war-time could be imported in a neutral 
ship into Hamburg or Bremen just as though 
there were no war, and that foodstuffs might be 
imported through a Dutch port even though there 
was proof that they were intended for the supply of 
the German army. These were very grave restric- 
tions of belligerent power at sea as we had 



68 THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 

exercised it in the Napoleonic Wars. And the 
railway communications of Europe created since 
those wars have greatly increased the effect of these 
restrictions. A hundred years ago, when there 
were no railways and the roads were bad, to 
blockade the ports of a country was to prohibit 
it from supplies over sea. Now the closing of 
German ports meant no more than the diversion 
of her traffic to neutral ports, which could not be 
blockaded. In all the changes of the law made 
throughout the century two principles are seen 
to be at work : the principle that belligerent 
power must yield to neutral rights, and the 
further principle that war is a relation between 
Governments, and must not be allowed to interfere 
with the peaceful activities of trade. " I believe," 
said Lord Salisbury in 1871, "that since the 
Declaration of Paris the fleet, valuable as it is 
for preventing an invasion of these shores, is almost 
valueless for any other purpose." He forgot its 
value in assisting our own oversea operations and 
in protecting the oversea communications of our 
commerce, but, subject to these qualifications, his 
judgment was, broadly, sound. Some of those who 
agreed with him were for denouncing the Declara- 
tion of Paris, and for going back to the old rules 
of the Napoleonic Wars ; others agreed that as 
the powers of our fleet over the enemy's commerce 
had been so reduced, the right course was to give 
up rights of capture, which were worthless used 
against a continental enemy, and might be 
dangerous used against an island Power like our- 
selves. The one section said : " You cannot afford, 



THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 69 

as a naval Power, to respect this encroachment of 
neutral privilege on belligerent rights." The other 
said : "You cannot go back to Napoleonic practice ; 
it is dangerous to stand still ; the best course is 
to make a virtue of necessity, and to proclaim the 
freedom of the seas by abolishing the right of 
capture of all enemy property except contraband." 
The outbreak of the war found the Government 
halting dubiously between these two voices. 

The Declaration of London, not having been 
ratified by Parliament, was not binding in this 
country, and we were therefore free to repudiate it. 
There were, however, difficulties in doing so, 
because, though not ratified, it had been signed, 
and it was, after all, only by a mere technicality 
of constitutional law, because the International 
Prize Courts proposed to be set up would supersede 
the authority of English Prize Courts, that the 
consent of Parliament was necessary to its validity. 
The Treaty guaranteeing the neutrality of Belgium 
had not been ratified by Parliament either. 
Having made this Treaty the main ground of our 
intervention, and denounced the Chancellor for 
describing it as a " scrap of paper," it was not 
easy to proceed to treat the Declaration of 
London as a " scrap of paper." Neither, having 
entered on the wa,r for the defence of neutral 
rights, was it easy to begin by withdrawing the 
rights guaranteed to neutrals and non-combatants 
by the Declaration of London. The Allies, there- 
fore, decided to observe the provisions of the 
Declaration subject to one modification : that the 
enemy was not to be free to import through neutral 



70 THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 

ports articles of conditional contraband destined 
for belligerent use. This modification, however, 
did not materially strengthen our belligerent 
power. We drove the enemy's fleet off the seas, 
not, however, without suffering losses which were 
at any rate commensurate with the enemy's losses 
through the laying up of his ships in port. There 
was some restriction in the enemy's supplies, not 
through our blockade — for as a blockade of Ger- 
many was useless without a blockade of Holland, 
which was impossible, we had not troubled to deciare 
one — but through the scarcity of shipping. But the 
economic strangulation of Germany, so far from 
tightening, was hardly beginning. 

Nor could it have begun if Germany had kept 
as legally within the law as the Allies had done. 
With a folly that has rarely been equalled in 
the conduct of war, she proceeded to supply us 
with cumulative justification for a strangulation 
that would otherwise have been impossible. She 
sowed mines indiscriminately in the high seas, 
and the narrow escape off the north of Ireland of a 
great liner was followed as a measure of retaliation 
by the closing of the North Sea except for a 
channel in the Straits. Germany in turn retaliated 
by the proclamation of her submarine blockade, 
which we answered by placing a complete embargo 
on all German commerce, inward and outward, 
through her own or through neutral ports. The 
policy of the Tirpitz faction — a policy which there is 
reason to believe was resisted, though in vain, by 
the Chancellor and the Moderates — thus gave us 
what nothing else could have given, the opportunity 



THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 71 

of establishing a complete blockade of German over- 
sea trade, whether through her own or neutral ports. 
If Germany had observed the rules of war her ports 
would have been open for the importation of all 
the articles on the free list, including cotton. Even 
conditional contraband would have been imported 
through her own and neutral ports unless it could 
be proved that it was for belligerents and not for 
purely commercial use. And had we attempted 
to extend our rights farther, we could only have 
done so by imitating at sea that gross invasion 
of treaty rights which Germany had committed 
on land by forcing her passage through Belgium. 
Those advantages German policy deliberately threw 
away. 

Meanwhile, German diplomacy had been busy 
in the United States. It is a fixed belief with 
nearly all Englishmen that British naval power 
is an instrument of liberty ; the phrase " maritime 
tyranny " is, to their minds, a patent self-contra- 
diction. That, however, is not a universal view, nor 
is it the view generally held in the United States. 
Ever since Benjamin Franklin's days it has been 
the policy of the American Government to press 
for the abolition of the right of capture at sea. 
It holds that this right is as offensive to public 
morality as the taking of booty in land operations. 
Throughout her chief opponent in securing this 
reform has been Great Britain. Nor was America's 
advocacy of this reform an example merely of 
devotion to principle. Before the Civil War her 
merchant marine was second only to ours, and to 
build up another great merchant fleet has long 



72 THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 

been one of the objects of the Democratic party. 
But the law of capture, it was believed in America, 
made it impossible for a nation to retain its 
merchant marine in war-time unless it had also 
an overwhelming naval, supremacy over its 
opponent ; and her politicians resented rules of 
war which exposed an inferior naval Power to 
this penalty. Moreover, there was a long history 
of quarrel between England and the United States 
on our exercise of belligerent rights against 
neutrals at sea. Nor did the United States take 
the British view of the political uses to which our 
naval power has been put in the past. The atti- 
tude of the average friendly American to British 
naval power was and is very much like that of the 
advanced English Liberal in the middle of the 
nineteenth century. Take, for example, the follow- 
ing passage from Professor Beesly's essay on 
" England and the Sea," and we shall not be far 
from the attitude of mind of the average American 
now. It does not invalidate the argument that 
when Professor Beesly wrote France was still the 
traditional enemy, and that his essay was a plea 
for better relations between this country and the 
great nation that is now its ally : — 

Suppose Napoleon I had left France a greal naval Power, 
in possession of Portland, the Isle of Man, and the Aland Isles ; 
suppose one Fleet permanently cruised off the mouth of the 
Mersey and another in the Baltic ; does any one imagine that 
England and the Northern Powers would ever be brought to 
look on such a state of things as natural or tolerable ? If it 
dated from Louis XIV, would a century and a half have 
reconciled us to it ? Would a dozen treaties and peaces have 



THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 73 

made it sacred in our eyes ? Should we excuse it on the ground 
of an extensive commerce, numerous colonies, or the police of 
the seas? Englishmen, I think, would then understand very 
well the meaning of the phrase "maritime tyranny," which they 
now profess themselves unable to comprehend. 

The average American, in fact, was at the 
beginning of this war prepared to think of 
British naval power much as the Englishman thinks 
of German military power. Take each of the 
charges brought against German militarism, and 
it does not require much ingenuity to find a parallel 
in the history of British " navalism." The German 
military theory is to wage war in the enemy's terri- 
tory. It is the British naval theory too. German 
military power has set at naught the rights of 
neutral Powers. British naval power has done 
the same in past history. The bombardment of 
Copenhagen by Nelson is a rough parallel (though 
not one to be pressed) to the invasion of Belgium. 
German militarism is cruel to non-combatants. But 
does a naval blockade, in its intention at any 
rate, restrict to combatants the suffering that it 
causes? Is not starvation by cutting off supplies 
an equally efficient and more economical way of 
killing babies than by bombarding them with 
1 2-in. naval guns or dropping incendiary bombs 
from Zeppelins? Is there much difference, so far 
as the victim is concerned, between the lawless 
looting of German officers on land and the con- 
fiscation of private property at sea by British 
officers in accordance with processes of law which 
the British Government has persistently refused 
to amend? Such sentiments, though they appear 



74 THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 

shocking' and perverse to the average English- 
man, occur quite naturally to the average 
American. That it should be so postulates a 
state of mind that is a permanent danger to 
relations of active and cordial friendship between 
this country and the United States. And how 
great that danger is may be inferred from the 
fact that not all the inhumanity of German sub- 
marine policy, the murder of American citizens 
on the high seas, the repeated flouting of American 
dignity, were able to obliterate in the mind of the 
average American the idea that there was no essen- 
tial difference between German militarism and 
British navalism, that the one was tyranny on land 
and the other tyranny at sea. To Englishmen, 
Germany's claim that she was contending for 
the freedom of the seas seems merely impudent 
and perverse, especially when it is put forward in 
a dispatch replying to American protests against 
the killing of American citizens travelling by the 
Lusitania. Yet President Wilson took it quite 
seriously. In his third Lusitania dispatch he 
wrote : — 

" The Government of the United States and the 
Imperial German Government, contending for the 
same great object, long stood together in urging 
the very principles on which the Government of 
the United States now insists. They are both con- 
tending for the freedom of the seas. The Govern- 
ment of the United States will continue to contend 
for that freedom without compromise and at any 
cost. It invites the practical co-operation of the 
Imperial German Government at this time, when 



THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 75 

co-operation may accomplish much and this great 
common object can be most strikingly and effec- 
tively achieved. The Imperial German Govern- 
ment express the hope that this object may be 
accomplished even before the present war ends. 
It can be. The Government of the United States 
not only feels obliged to insist upon it, by whom- 
soever it is violated or ignored, in the protection 
of its own citizens, but it is also deeply interested 
in seeing it made practicable between the 
belligerents themselves. It holds itself ready at 
any time to act as a common friend who may 
be privileged to suggest a way." 

In spite of the outrage of sinking the Lasitania, 
President Wilson is still ready to give Germany 
credit for desiring the freedom of the seas and 
still remembers the early treaty with Prussian 
Frederic, guaranteeing exemption of the private 
property of Americans and Prussians from the 
operations of war between their countries. 
Germany, in spite of her terrible works, was 
saved from utter disgrace in American eyes by 
that old faith in the freedom of the seas which 
she still professed. England's works might be 
less heinous and even relatively good ; but the 
faith was not in her. And so in spite of the great 
consideration shown by this country for the interests 
of the United States and the woeful lack of respect 
for the United States and for ordinary humanity 
shown by Germany, the two countries are treated 
by the United States as equally at fault. And 
in pari delicto potior est conditio defendentis. 
From which it may be inferred how dangerous 



76 THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 

would have been the relations between this country 
and the United States if Germany had not, with 
a stupidity cloaked but not concealed by her in- 
humanity, deliberately put herself in the wrong 
by sowing* mines broadcast and by torpedoing 
merchantmen on the high seas for no offence 
known to international law or morality. 

No doubt the difficulties of our position were 
exaggerated by the somewhat unfortunate methods 
of retaliation adopted by this country. We could 
have secured precisely the same results by de- 
claring a blockade of German ports, by extending 
the doctrine of continuous voyage so as to cover 
imports of contraband and quasi-contraband 
through neutral ports by Germany, and, lastly, if 
these steps were insufficient, by extending our list 
of contraband. Mr. Asquith's announced inten- 
tion not to allow our embargo to be embarrassed 
by " juridical niceties " hardly became a nation 
which was defending the idea of law in inter- 
national affairs. The law cannot be distinguished 
from the forms which he proposed quite unneces- 
sarily to set aside. But whatever our Govern- 
ment had done, there would have been great diffi- 
culty in extending our belligerent rights so as to 
deal Germany a really serious blow. The broad 
fact is that but for Germany's violations of the 
law she might have escaped all serious injury to 
her economic life from the operations of our fleet, 
except such as was inseparable from the scarcity 
of shipping and from the cessation of the earnings 
of her great shipping companies. Every outrage 
committed by Germany at sea was the occasion of 



THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 77 

a fresh accession of power to the British fleet 
which it would not otherwise have acquired. But 
even so, when Von Tirpitz had done the best for 
the British Navy and the worst for his own country 
by his blunders, it may be doubted whether the 
British Navy by its war on German commerce 
appreciably shortened the war or indeed inflicted 
much more injury on Germany than our own 
shipping received. "If we look at the example 
of former periods," said Lord Palmerston in a 
speech explaining" the Declaration of Paris to the 
Liverpool Chamber of Commerce, " we shall not 
find that any powerful country was ever vanquished 
through the losses of individuals. It is the con- 
flict of armies by land and of fleets by sea that 
decides the great contests of nations." 

To sum up, the conclusions so far reached are 
these : First, if no injury had been done to the 
trade of neutrals, the British Navy would have 
been powerless to inflict more than inconvenience 
on the economic life of Germany— an inconvenience 
trifling by comparison with that caused by the 
mobilization of the Army. Secondly, even after 
Germany's violation of the laws of war and of the 
rights of neutrals had led to the retaliatory 
embargo on all German trade, it is doubtful 
whether the war of our fleet on private commerce 
has had any appreciable effect on the duration of 
the war. Thirdly, whatever conclusions may be 
drawn from this war must hold with redoubled 
force of any other conceivable war. The Germanic 
Allies in this war are islanded in European con- 
flict. Of all the countries of Europe which have 



78 THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 

a seaboard and interior communications with 
Germany only five — Roumania, Norway and 
Sweden, Denmark and Holland — are neutral. In 
no other possible war could the proportion of 
neutral coastline to the area affected by the war 
be so small. It is obvious that a war on German 
commerce with France as a neutral or on France 
with Germany as a neutral would be impracticable. 
We could not blockade a great and powerful 
neutral country ; yet without such blockade our 
Navy could hardly touch the enemy's oversea com- 
merce. The damage to the enemy's commerce 
by our naval operations is therefore greater in 
this than it could be in any other conceivable 
war, and if it is small in this war, it would 
be quite negligible in any other. On the other 
hand, if the injury of a commercial blockade 
against a continental country is to amount to 
anything, it can only do so at the cost of 
injury to neutrals and to the prejudice of our 
politics in regard to them. In a sentence, the seas 
are too free for the exercise of really effectual 
naval war on commerce, not free enough to 
satisfy neutrals or to establish the British Navy 
as the acknowledged champion of international law 
and equity at sea. As Englishmen of all shades 
of political opinion have agreed, from Cobden to 
Mr. Gibson Bowles, from Bright to Mr. F. E. 
Smith, we must go forward or backward. The 
law cannot remain suspended between the ancient 
and the modern worlds as it was when this war 
broke out. 

Although the blunders of Von Tirpitz had 



THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 79 

enabled this country to go back a century in its 
practice and to wage this war on rules even stricter 
than those of the Napoleonic days, a permanent 
practice cannot be founded on the abnormal and 
transient justification of German excesses. The 
alternative policy of going forward merits a 
closer examination. What are we to understand 
by the phrase " the freedom of the seas "? It 
will not do to say that it means freedom for 
Germany to do as she pleases, for as the quotation 
already made from President Wilson's dispatches 
shows, it is possible to approve of the idea even 
while protesting against Germany's right to do 
as she pleases. Moreover, Sir Edward Grey has 
himself declared that the idea may well form the 
subject of negotiation when the war is over. 

By the freedom of the seas is meant the 
exemption of commerce from the operations of 
war so long as it does not take part in them. 
This exemption is to apply to the commerce of 
belligerent as well as of neutral countries ; and 
the proviso that the exemption is forfeited if com- 
merce takes a part in military operations con- 
templates as a necessary corollary an exacter and 
probably a wider definition of contraband by 
international agreement. There is no freedom so 
long as enemy's private property is liable to capture 
at sea under its own flag ; and the phrase there- 
fore at the least implies the acceptance of the 
reform which the United States have persistently 
advocated since Franklin's day. But the principle 
may imply more. It may be found on examina- 
tion to involve the abolition of commercial as 



80 THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 

distinguished from naval blockade. This dis- 
tinction would need very careful working out in 
detail, but two tests have been suggested: " First, 
if a port is a naval arsenal or is sheltering the 
ships of the enemy, its blockade is a naval 
operation and is permissible. Secondly, if a port, 
though not an arsenal or a place of arms, is 
being used as a basis for 5 the operations of the 
hostile fleet, or if it is invested by land by an 
armed force and the blockade may be held to 
be a completion by sea of the siege lines, in such 
case again the blockade is permissible. Non- 
combatants may suffer from such blockade, but 
their suffering is incidental to the scheme of 
military operations and not its whole or main 
object, as in commercial blockade proper." " 
This, then, is the complete conception of the free- 
dom of commerce on the seas, as understood by 
Cobden ; but inability to accept the whole would 
not preclude this country, if it saw fit, from 
accepting a part. The United States would 
certainly be willing to accept a part. 

The principles underlying such proposals for 
securing the freedom of the seas are broad and 
simple, and correspond somewhat closely with the 
heads of our quarrel with German militarism. 
German militarism is accused, and justly, of violat- 
ing the rights of neutrals. But we have seen 
that any naval war on commerce, if it is to be 
effective, must necessarily interfere with neutral 

1 " The Freedom of Commerce in War." By Mancunian. A 
pre-war pamphlet issued by the National Reform Union. 



THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 81 

rights of trade. It takes two to make a bargain- 
that is to say, to trade ; and any interference with 
the trade of one party is necessarily an interference 
with the trade of the other, and this other (trade 
between belligerents being suspended by war) 
is always a neutral. It would seem, there- 
fore, to follow that our advocacy of the rights of 
neutrals in land warfare requires as its com- 
plement the advocacy of their rights on the sea. 
Secondly, German militarism is accused of neglect- 
ing the distinction between combatant and non- 
combatant subjects of the enemy belligerent. To 
some extent, the confiscation of enemy property at 
sea does the same. Looting on land is forbidden by 
law ; on sea it is sanctioned by law, but ought, if 
this principle of distinguishing between com- 
batants and non-combatants is to be enforced, to 
be prohibited. Again, the abolition of the right 
of capture would in effect internationalize three- 
quarters of the surface of the globe and place 
it under the rule of law. Ego terrce dominus lex 
maris, in Justinian's phrase. There is some in- 
compatibility between our denunciation of Ger- 
many's preponderant military strength as a menace 
to Europe and our assertion of our right to 
form a Navy double the strength of any other. 
Lastly, what is the radical vice of 'German 
militarism which we are combating but its denial 
of all individual and private rights where these 
conflict with the will of the State? It insists on 
war being a relation, not between State and State, 
but between the individuals composing the States. 
Articles 33-6 of the Declaration of London, in 

6 



82 THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 

laying down the rules of conditional contraband, 
draw a distinction between civilian and State uses 
of an article of import. How can that distinction 
be kept up in dealing with a State which when 
it is at war claims the life and services of every- 
one without distinction? Even in England it has 
become a commonplace that every one is a com- 
batant, if not in the firing line then in the munitions 
workshop, and if not in the workshop then 
at his private work, increasing the taxable wealth 
of the country. The system which the necessities 
of the war has forced upon England is part of the 
permanent organization of the State in Germany, 
and this is what we understand by " continental 
militarism." It is not reasonable that Germany, 
who maintains this system on land, and forces 
her neighbours to adopt it, too, should claim to 
enforce the rival system on the other element. 
As against Germany, we are fully justified in 
maintaining the full vigour of " navalism " as a 
counterpoise to her militarism. But such a 
counterpoise of evils is neither in our own nor 
in the general interest. There is a clear distinction 
between the end and the means that we take to 
the end. The end, as set up by Mr. Asquith, is 
the destruction of militarism. The attainment of 
that end necessarily implies, if we are sincere, 
the abandonment of " navalism " — that is to say, 
the complete immunity, so far as rules of war 
can secure it, of neutrals and of non-com- 
batants from the operations of naval war. And 
if this immunity would help us to secure the 
overthrow of German militarism, we should not 



THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS 83 

wait till the end of the war to concede it or to 
promise to concede it. 

The same conclusions may be reached by other 
directions of thought. If it be true that this war 
has made relations of closer friendship with the 
United States one of the first of our political 
necessities, the story of the negotiations between 
the United States and Germany has revealed 
the freedom of the seas as an indispensable con- 
dition of that closer friendship. It may be, too, 
that just as the war on land has shown the excesses 
of German militarism to be not only crimes but 
blunders, so, too, the full history of the war will 
show that our attempts to wage war on German 
commerce have not materially influenced its pro- 
gress, but have caused us as much loss as we 
have inflicted. These arguments, however, may 
be developed with more certainty when the com- 
plete story of the war is before us. But though 
they may, and probably will, confirm conclusions 
reached by the argument based on political 
principle and international justice, they cannot in 
any case invalidate them. 



THE 

OPEN 

DOOR 



THE OPEN DOOR 

By J. A. HOBSON 

There can be no security of durable peace unless 
the chief economic causes of discord among nations 
are removed. For though the conscious motives 
which incite nations to prepare for war and to 
engage in it may be self-defence, the claims of 
nationality, the sentiments of liberty and of 
humanity, the maintenance of public law, behind 
these motives always lies the pressure of powerful 
economic needs and interests. It is idle to seek to 
determine the relative strength and importance of 
these economic and non-economic factors. We 
need not accept the cynical maxim that " all 
modern wars are for markets " in order to realize 
the part which commerce and finance play in 
fomenting international disputes. But history 
makes it manifest that at all times the contacts 
and conflicts between different nations are chiefly 
due to the attempts of members of one nation, 
or tribe, or other group, to seek its livelihood 
or gain beyond the confines of its own country. 
Migrations or plundering raids, conducted under 
the pressure of congested population and scarcity 
of food, impulsive overflows from thickly peopled 
into sparsely peopled areas, were chief causes pf 



88 THE OPEN DOOR 

strife among primitive peoples, and must still be 
regarded as the deepest underlying sources of 
disturbance in many parts of the world. The large 
highly organized commerce of modern times, taken 
in conjunction with extractive and manufacturing 
arts that enable vastly increased yields of foods 
and other material requisites of life to be got 
from restricted areas of land, greatly abates the 
force of these violent overflows. But this com- 
mercial intercourse between nations makes the 
inhabitants of every country far more dependent 
upon persons and events outside the area of 
their own country than was formerly the case. 
This divergence between political and economic 
areas of interest and control is of the 
first significance in understanding our problem. 
It enables us to perceive a certain unreality or 
inadequacy in the stress laid upon " nationality " 
or " political autonomy " as the basis of a satis- 
factory settlement. No measure of political 
independence, however complete, could secure for 
any moderately progressive people the freedom 
which they require. For every people needs 
access to the produce and the markets of other 
peoples, the right to buy and sell abroad on reason- 
able terms. The idea of an economically self-con- 
tained State has long been obsolescent. Though 
militarist States have sometimes grasped and even 
realized the possibility of reverting; to a self- 
sufficing economic basis during a period of war, 
the normal life of every modern nation rests upon 
a basis of large and expanding opportunities out- 
side its political area. 



THE OPEN DOOR 89 

Every modern industrial nation, with a large 
and growing population, demands that its Govern- 
ment shall assist it in securing and maintaining 
ample liberties and opportunities of access to the 
economic resources of other countries. It seeks 
three economic liberties. First comes liberty of 
trade, the right of access for its traders and manu- 
facturers to buy and sell in foreign markets without 
excessive or oppressive barriers in the shape of 
tariffs, tolls, fines, or other obstacles or prohibi- 
tions. As a country becomes more thickly peopled, 
and so tends to specialize more closely upon certain 
productive occupations especially adapted to its 
natural resources, its working population, and its 
situation, it becomes more and more dependent for 
some of its essentials of livelihood upon external 
supplies. So far as foreign trade is conducted 
between the members of civilized nations, the 
mutual advantages of such exchange afford a strong, 
though not always a sufficiently strong, basis for 
free intercourse. Cobden was not wrong when he 
insisted that the reciprocal gains of free interchange 
of goods formed a genuine guarantee of peace. 
How, then, does it come to pass that most civilized 
nations have since sought to place irksome restric- 
tions upon this intercourse, and that a diagnosis 
of most modern wars shows that the chief 
directing motive is a pressure for markets? No 
adequate answer to this question is possible, until 
account is taken of the growing importance of the 
economic relations of civilized with uncivilized or 
undeveloped countries. For it is in their dealings 
with these backward countries that trade invites 



90 THE OPEN DOOR 

economic and political interference, and evokes 
international antagonism. Though political con- 
siderations, missionary enterprise, and other activi- 
ties of an adventurous people, appreciably affect 
these dealings, colonization and imperial expansion 
are essentially economic processes. They originate 
from simple trade. 

For the successful conduct of trade, casual 
visitations of merchant vessels needed to be 
supplemented by permanent settlements, with a 
view to the orderly collection of goods and the 
application of the stimuli, inducements, or pres- 
sures needed to get natives to perform the 
necessary work and to acquire the habits of 
consuming the articles of foreign barter. So the 
foreign land and labour fall more and more under 
white men's control, and the cultivation of sugar, 
coffee, tobacco, and other crops supplements the 
earlier rude processes of barter and collection. 
Roads, harbours, and other large permanent works 
must be undertaken, and permanent government, 
half economic, half political, set on foot. Exploita- 
tion of the mineral and other natural resources 
leads to organized arrangement for their profitable 
working. Large capital is invested in mines and 
railways, and in cities suited to the requirements 
of white officials and business men. 

Two important changes have now come to pass. 
Simple trade between the peoples of the two 
countries is no longer the chief consideration. The 
backward country has become an area of profitable 
exploitation and investment. Development and in- 
vestment companies supplement and direct the 



THE OPEN DOOR 91 

trading interests, and financial schemes for opera- 
ting gold mines, rubber and tea plantations, and 
for building railroads, are hatched by little groups 
of financiers in London, Paris, or Berlin. The 
country is now primarily an area for investment, 
not a mere outlet for the sale of goods. The two 
processes, of course, are intimately related, for in- 
vested capital goes out chiefly in the form of 
goods, the engines, rails, mining plant, and other 
stores which the developing process requires. But 
financiers are henceforth in chief control, and 
monetary operations control the fate of the country 
thus " penetrated." This economic change affects 
political relations. White traders and manufac- 
turers have always utilized the services of their 
Governments to procure access to foreign markets, 
sometimes by force of arms, as in the case of the 
Opium War with China. But as soon as a back- 
ward country has become an area of investment, 
political interference is apt to be more exigent. 
The processes of economic development involve 
the presence of white managers, engineers, and 
other " outlanders," as well as the control of 
native labour and various interferences with native 
habits. Native unrest discloses a government in- 
competent to the protection of life and property. 
The white man's government must intervene, and 
a " sphere of interest " passes into a protectorate, 
whose political control is apt to become tighter 
in accordance with the needs of the economic 
situation, as interpreted by financiers at home and 
"men upon the spot." Though other political 
and genuinely humanitarian tendencies commingle 



92 THE OPEN DOOR 

with the economic drive of events, the latter, being 
consciously exercised by business men with a clear 
view of what they want, is the determinant factor. 
The recent history of colonial and imperial develop- 
ment on the part of European Powers everywhere 
furnishes a convincing demonstration of the 
powerful secret, or occasionally open, direction of 
foreign policy by financial and commercial interests 
working in sympathy with political aspirations. 
Egypt, the Transvaal, Morocco, Tripoli, Persia, 
Mexico, China afford recent illustrations of this 
direction of foreign policy by capitalist interests. 
The process finds, of course, its most refined 
expression in the struggles of rival banking groups 
within the several capitalistic countries to finance 
the Governments of Russia, Persia, or China and 
to use their respective Foreign Offices to push their 
profitable projects. 

From the standpoint of the developed economic 
nation with great reserves available for foreign 
trade and investment, and with growing dependence 
upon foreign sources of supply, the political- 
economic process here described appears under the 
guise of economic liberty. This will be evident 
from our British outlook, for we have gone so 
much farther along this road than any other nation. 
Our effective " freedom," the opportunity to satisfy 
our needs and tastes, to supply ourselves with 
the requisite variety of foods and other articles for 
our progressive standards of life, to procure the 
goods necessary to sustain our industries and to 
promote our material prosperity, rests upon free, 
large, regular, and growing access to the resources 



THE OPEN DOOR 93 

of other lands and upon full opportunities to assist 
in their discovery and development. In this we 
need " freedom of the sea/' or safe conduct for 
our merchant ships over the waters of the world, 
the right of entry into foreign ports, " freedom 
of trade " in the sense of the secure use of trade 
routes and markets upon equal terms with other 
foreigners, and " freedom of investment," or the 
equal right to assist in the profitable development 
of countries which are in need of capital. In pro- 
portion as we are restricted in any of these oppor- 
tunities we suffer a loss of economic liberty, which 
in the last resort might mean a loss of life itself. 
What holds of Great Britain holds in different 
degrees of all other developed or developing 
peoples. Their effective freedom requires free out- 
lets and equal opportunities beyond the confines 
of their own political area. 

Associated with the claims for equal opportuni- 
ties for commerce and investment is the claim 
for freedom of migration. If capital is properly 
to play its part in developing sparsely peopled 
countries, labour should be free to enter them. 
Laissez-aller is demanded alike in the interests 
of capital and of labour. Every restriction upon 
the free flow of labour from thickly into thinly 
populated lands, from lower-waged into higher- 
waged areas, is prima facie an interference with" 
the liberty of workers to improve their conditions 
and with the best development of the world's re- 
sources. As knowledge of economic opportunities 
and facilities of transport are enlarged, this liberty 
of migration is more highly valued, and its 



94 THE OPEN DOOR 

denial or restriction is a more frequent and graver 
source of international friction. 

These economic liberties of trade, investment, 
and migration, which are so essential to the pros- 
perity or even the existence of certain industrially 
advanced or over-populated countries, are unfor- 
tunately found to conflict with the " rights " of 
the rulers or inhabitants of other countries whom 
these liberties affect. By tariffs, bounties, or pro- 
hibitions, goods are refused free admittance to 
profitable markets ; trade routes by land or sea are 
barred ; legal restrictions are put upon the acquisi- 
tion or use of land or the control of industries 
by foreign capital and management ; monopolies 
or privileges are assigned by favour, corruption, or 
political " pull " ; alien laws preclude the intro- 
duction of the necessary supplies of labour. 
Everywhere " liberties " of economic expansion 
claimed by some nations are confronted by 
" liberties " of exclusion claimed by others. 

These conflicts of " liberty " underlie the armed 
preparations and the wars of the modern world. 
In order to give point to what otherwise may seem a 
vague generality, I will cite an interesting analysis 
of the deeper causes of the present war as they 
present themselves to thoughtful business men in 
a neutral country l : — 

Consider the situation of the present belligerents : — 

Serbia wants a window on the sea, and is shut out by Austrian 
influence. 

1 Memorandum of the Reform Club of New York. 



THE OPEN DOOR 95 

Austria wants an outlet in the East, Constantinople or 
Salonika. 

Russia wants ice-free ports in the Baltic and Pacific, Con- 
stantinople, and a free outlet from the Black Sea into the 
Mediterranean. 

Germany claims to be hemmed in by a ring of steel, and 
needs the facilities of Antwerp and Rotterdam for the Rhine 
Valley commerce, security against being shut out from the East 
by commercial restrictions in the overland route, and freedom 
of the seas for her foreign commerce. 

England must receive uninterrupted supplies of food and raw 
materials, and her oversea communications must be maintained. 

This is also true of France, Germany, Belgium, and other 
European countries. 

Japan, like Germany, must have opportunity for her expanding 
population, industries, and commerce. 

The foreign policies of the nations still at peace are also 
determined by trade relations. Our own country desires the 
open door in the East. 

South and North American States and Scandinavia are already 
protesting against the war's interference with their ocean trade. 

All nations that are not in possession of satisfactory harbours 
on the sea demand outlets, and cannot and ought not to be 
contented till they get them. 

Nations desiring to extend their colonial enterprises entertain 
these ambitions for commercial reasons, either to possess 
markets from which they cannot be excluded, or to develop 
such markets for themselves, and be able to exclude others from 
them when they so determine. 

If any reasonably safe basis of settlement is 
to be found, some reconciliation of these opposing 
" liberties " must be discovered. To some thinkers, 
reared in the older school of economic harmonies, 



96 THE OPEN DOOR 

salvation lies in the removal of all political and 
legal restrictions, and a reversion of the Foreign 
Offices of all countries to a policy of non-inter- 
vention. It is with them a plain and simple 
application of the principles of individual liberty. 
It should, they hold, be possible to convince the 
"peoples and Governments of every country that 
their advantage lies in admitting on terms of 
absolute equality the trade, the capital, the labour- 
power of other countries, and in giving foreigners 
every facility for assisting in the development of 
the national resources. In this utmost extension of 
economic internationalism the greatest prosperity 
of the world and of each constituent nation will 
be found. Though traders and investors are 
primarily "out for private gain, and not for any 
increase of the wealth of their nation or of the 
world, their enterprise will incidentally but neces- 
sarily secure the wider economic welfare. It must, 
however, be objected that the principles and prac- 
tices of most; highly developed States are so 
strongly committed to fiscal Protection and to other 
uses of political power for the furtherance of 
foreign trade, as to render any early hope of an 
acceptance of complete economic liberty chimerical. 
The financial position of every belligerent country 
after this war must render any lowering of tariffs, 
involving sacrifice of revenue, impracticable, to say 
nothing of the strong disposition to seek present 
security, at the expense of opulence, in closer 
national self-sufficiency. It will, I think, be recog- 
nized that the war will have checked for the time 
being the movement towards Free Trade among the 



THE OPEN DOOR 97 

developed nations which was discernible in recent 
years, and that its renewal will depend upon the 
necessarily slow process of establishing general 
confidence in arrangements for a pacific future. 

If, then, liberty and equality of economic oppor- 
tunities form an essential of any lasting settlement, 
the early application of the policy must lie in agree- 
ments for the commercial and financial development 
of extra-European countries and markets. Suppos- 
ing that the eight Great Powers, together with the 
smaller developed European countries, could come 
to an agreement for the equal admission of their 
trade and capital to all colonial possessions, pro- 
tectorates, or spheres of influence, present or pros- 
pective, not merely would the gravest causes of 
future antagonism be removed, but substantial new 
bonds of community of international interest would 
be provided. 

14 World-power," " place in the sun," " freedom 
of the seas " — the three phrases which inspire the 
aggressive policy of Germany — derive most of the 
potency of their appeal from the sense of constric- 
tion which German industrial and commercial men 
experienced as they sought new outlets in the world 
for their produce, their capital, and their enter- 
prises. Prussian militarism, the doctrines of 
Treitzschke and Bernhardi, the expansive claims of 
German " Kultur," would have been ineffective had 
they not been supported by the feeling of restricted 
enterprise and thwarted ambition which led large 
numbers of the business men to support the Flotten 
Verein and the pushful foreign policy it indicated. 
Though the language of Welt-politik, of course, 

7 



98 THE OPEN DOOR 

had its appeal to the sentimental patriot in terms of 
territory and of political aggrandizement, expand- 
ing markets and profits were the leit-motif in Ger- 
man as in other imperialism. This war is for 
Germany in its essence a great economic project, 
designed to break down the barriers which impeded 
what her business classes deemed the legitimate 
expansion of their enterprise. Late in achieving 
industrial development on modern lines, Germany 
found herself forestalled in all part9 of the New 
World suitable for genuine colonization, and in 
most of the tropical or sub -tropical lands with 
known rich resources and available supplies of 
native labour. As her industries came to yield 
larger surpluses for export trade, and her needs 
of foreign supplies of foods and materials became 
more urgent, this lack of the preferential markets, 
with which other competing industrial nations had 
provided themselves in their colonies and protec- 
torates, and the fears lest the growing intensity of 
competition should close to them the open markets 
of the British Empire, served to whet her resent- 
ment against the existing arrangements, and 
were a formidable weapon in the hands of aggres- 
sive militarism. 

It will no doubt be said that such an interpreta- 
tion of their situation was a foolish one. Germany 
was, in fact, advancing in industrial development 
and in wealth faster than any other nation ; Her 
foreign trade, based on cheapness, on quality, and 
on skilful marketing, was rapidly expanding, and 
she had no serious grounds for fearing any check 
upon her prosperity. No people ought to have 



THE OPEN DOOR 99 

been able to realize more fully the truth of the 
saying that you do not need to own a country 
in order to trade profitably with it. Are Germans, 
then, the victims of a mere illusion, to the effect 
that imperialism is a commercially profitable career 
for a nation? If they are, it is an illusion shared 
by all the other nations which have embarked upon 
the policy of territorial aggrandizement. Great 
Britain is sated with empire, mainly the result of 
pushful trading ; France, Italy, Holland believe 
themselves to derive great commercial advantages 
from their colonies ; economic exploitation has 
underlain the recent experiments of Japan and the 
United States in the acquisition of oversea 
territory. 

To dispel an illusion so widely prevalent and 
so firmly held will not prove an easy enterprise. 
The first step towards doing so is to recognize 
in what sense it is and in what sense it is not an 
illusion. When a powerful civilized State annexes 
or assumes political control over an undeveloped 
country in Africa, or a group of Pacific islands, 
securing internal order and enabling white traders 
and planters to live there safely and conduct their 
business, it is generally true that this enlargement 
of economic opportunities brings an increase of 
wealth for the world at large. It is also usually 
the case that the lion's share of these economic 
gains, whether in the shape of trade or of lucra- 
tive investment, falls to members of the nation 
which has taken on the work of "Empire." For, 
though the doctrine that " trade follows the flag " 
has been stated in an exaggerated form, it con- 



ioo THE OPEN DOOR 

tains a considerable element of truth even in cases 
where political control is not avowedly used to 
secure an exclusive or a preferential market. 
Though Free Trade prevails throughout the British 
Empire (with the exception of the self-governing 
dominions), political dominion and prestige are 
undoubtedly favourable to British trade and British 
capital in the work of development which is carried 
on. Imperialism everywhere proceeds by the 
mutual support of politics and commerce. But 
the recognition of the commercial utility of the flag 
by no means implies that Imperialism is neces- 
sarily or normally a profitable economic policy for 
the nation that pursues it. For the gains that 
accrue to the nation as a whole, including the 
advantages its trade enjoys over those enjoyed by 
other trading nations, are usually more than 
balanced by the expenses of government, including 
the costs and risks, direct and indirect, of the 
policy of Imperial aggrandizement. Even our 
Empire, prima facie the most prosperous the world 
has known, would almost certainly be found, by 
any complete statement of the credit and debit 
account, not to be a profitable business proposi- 
tion. Certainly the expansion of the last genera- 
tion, inclusive of the costs of acquiring, maintaining, 
and defending the new territories, would be found 
to have cost enormously more than any present or 
prospective addition it brings to the wealth of 
our nation. Regarded from the standpoint of a 
nation, the whole policy of territorial expansion 
and the forceful foreign policy which it involves 
are bad business. But from the standpoint of 



THE OPEN DOOR 101 

certain financial, commercial, and manufacturing 
interests within the nation it is good business. For 
the political and military risks and costs of this 
colonial and foreign policy fall upon the nation as 
a whole, while the advantages accrue to favoured 
individuals . So long, therefore, as groups of business 
men within each nation are permitted to use the 
diplomacy and the armed forces of their State to 
push their trade with foreign countries, to secure 
for them concessions, spheres of exploitation, and 
other business privileges, and to protect and im- 
prove the trade and investments which they may 
have established by their private enterprise for 
their private profit, these perilous conflicts of 
foreign policy are likely to be a fatal obstacle to 
any scheme of international settlement. The roots 
of this disease of imperial expansion, which has 
been poisoning' the foreign policy of all the Great 
Powers, lie in the excessive political and economic 
power of modern capitalism. The only radical 
cure is the progress of democratic control within 
each nation. A genuinely self-governing nation 
would not permit its foreign relations to be deter- 
mined by the pressure of a group of bankers, or 
of financiers and contractors, of shipowners and 
merchants, conspiring with ambitious, jealous, or 
suspicious statesmen and diplomatists to embark 
upon new, perilous, and expensive projects in 
countries which do not belong to them. The de- 
terminant acts of the foreign policy of every civi- 
lized State are secretly influenced, and usually 
governed, by the strong will and clear-sighted 
purpose of business men, who wish to make money 



102 THE OPEN DOOR 

for themselves by persuading other people into 
putting their money into projects for making rail- 
ways, developing minerals, oil, rubber, nitrates, 
etc., in countries which are backward and desti- 
tute of capital. The powerful pressure of financial 
and commercial interests along these lines of 
foreign and colonial policy is, however, largely 
an economic necessity due to a distribution of 
wealth as between the various classes of the 
advanced nations which, by restricting the quan- 
tity of capital that can find profitable investment 
at home, drives too large a surplus to seek over- 
sea investment. A distribution of wealth or 
income more favourable to the labouring popula- 
tion of each country would, by raising the national 
standard of consumption in the body of the people, 
afford employment to a larger capital in the staple 
industries at home, while at the same time it re- 
duced the proportion of that surplus wealth in the 
shape of rents and profits which is automatically 
saved and accumulated in the hands of the 
capitalist class. The improved efficiency of the 
industrial classes, resulting from a better distribu- 
tion of wealth, might indeed produce so large an 
increase of wealth as to maintain the aggregate 
of savings as large as before, but the increased 
demand for commodities exercised by the workers 
would keep a larger share of the new capital at 
home, and would so proportionately relieve the 
pressure of that competition for foreign areas of 
investment which we see to be the economic root 
of international discord. 

Peace in the future cannot be secured without 



THE OPEN DOOR 103 

some such advance in the arts of political and 
economic democracy as shall release the foreign 
policy of the several nations from the control of 
private interests engaged in pushing for profit- 
able markets, concessions, and spheres of business 
interests, and in lending money to or providing 
armaments for foreign Governments. 

But, it will be said, this progress in fully 
enlightened popular government within each State 
must be a slow process. Meantime what lines of 
safety can be laid down for the present abatement 
of economic conflicts? 

The proposal that Governments shall agree to 
a simple policy of " Hands off," leaving their 
" nationals " free to undertake any foreign trade 
or investments and work of development they 
choose entirely at their own discretion and their 
own risk, is quite impracticable. 

An agreement of the Powers to proceed no 
farther with the policy of political absorption of 
backward countries, and with the political assist- 
ance hitherto given to private businesses for 
purposes of trade and finance, could furnish no 
possible basis for a pacific future. For, since 
most of the desirable areas of profitable exploita- 
tion have already been appropriated, and are in 
actual process of economic absorption, no equality 
of opportunity could be provided by an arrange- 
ment that would divide the Powers into two 
groups, one satisfied, the other unsatisfied, and 
would preclude the latter for ever from obtaining 
satisfaction. Great Britain, and, perhaps, France, 
already gorged with Empire, might be willing to 



104 THE OPEN DOOR 

assent to such a compact, but could Germany be 
expected to do so? Could Russia or Japan? 

No less impracticable would the proposal be 
as applied to the unabsorbed portion of the earth. 
The notion that the Governments of the civilized 
States could safely or advantageously leave the 
further processes of economic development to the 
free play of private profiteering enterprise among 
their trading and financial classes must be rejected 
as soon as its meaning is realized. Such a policy 
of naked laissez-faire is quite inadmissible. A 
deliberate acceptance of the theory that bands of 
armed buccaneers calling themselves traders are 
free to rob defenceless savages, to poison them 
with alcohol or opium, to seize their lands, impose 
forced labour, and establish a slave trade is incon- 
ceivable. Such laissez-faire would soon convert 
any rich, unabsorbed corner of the world into a 
Congo, a San Thome, or a Putumayo, tempered 
only by the fears of native risings and massacres. 
The mere abstinence from political intervention on 
the part of civilized States would plunge every un- 
appropriated country into sheer anarchy. But, even 
if the Governments or peoples of certain unde- 
veloped countries were able successfully to resist 
the entrance of foreign trade and capital, and to 
refuse all access to strangers, this is not a policy 
in which other peoples, or their Governments, can 
or ought to acquiesce. No reasonable interpreta- 
tion of rights of nationality or independence can 
justify the inhabitants of a country in refusing both 
themselves to develop the resources of the country 
and to permit others to do so. Such absolute jus 



THE OPEN DOOR 105 

atendi et abutendi is no more defensible as a right 
of national property than it is of individual. The 
wandering tribes of hunters or herdsmen who may 
form the sparse population of fertile lands, capable 
of sustaining large settled communities and con- 
tributing richly to the wealth and welfare of 
surrounding nations, cannot be permitted to 
practise a policy of permanent exclusion. The 
deposits of nitrates, rubber, copper, or other world- 
wealth which they contain the world has a right 
to insist shall not remain unutilized. 

The problem is twofold : first, how to secure 
the reasonable rights of the inhabitants of such 
undeveloped countries against a policy of plunder, 
extinction of life, or servitude imposed by the 
people of a powerful aggressive State ; secondly, 
how to secure equal opportunities to the members 
of various advanced nations to participate in the 
work of developing the natural resources and the 
trade of these backward countries. 

History shows that the former issue, primarily 
one of justice and humanity, is intimately bound 
up with the latter, the more distinctively economic, 
issue. The peace of the world is dependent upon 
both. The most ruthless acts of annexation and 
the most wasteful practices of exploitation have 
been due to the policy of exclusive possession and 
protection imposed by the Government of a 
colonizing nation in the short-sighted interest of 
particular groups of traders or syndicates of capi- 
talists. If the Governments of all civilized nations 
would consent to give equal rights of commerce 
and equal facilities of investment and develop- 



106 THE OPEN DOOR 

mental work in their colonies and protectorates 
to members of all nations, this single agreement 
would go farther to secure a peaceful future for 
the world than any other measure, such as reduc- 
tion of armaments, general arbitration, or 
guarantees of national integrity. For not only 
would it greatly diminish the resentment and envy 
with which the older colonizing Powers are regarded 
by rising Powers, such as Germany and Japan, but 
it would greatly modify all competition for further 
acquisition of territory. If business interests, 
nationally grouped, could no longer hope to gain 
by pressing through their Foreign and Colonial 
Offices for annexation, charters, and concessions, 
and exclusive or preferential trading terms, the 
chief grounds for suspicion and hostility between 
the Governments of the Great Powers would be 
removed. It might then be a comparatively easy 
matter for friendly Governments to agree among 
themselves what policy to adopt with regard to 
still unappropriated countries, where dangerous dis- 
order might prevail, or where the joint interests of 
all civilized peoples justified some interference or 
control. One method would be the establishment 
of a joint international protectorate, exercised by 
a Commission appointed by the permanent Inter- 
national Council, or whatever body was entrusted 
with the execution of the Treaty of International 
Relations. Another would be the delegation of this 
duty of protection by this international authority 
to the Government of some single nation, where 
propinquity or other special circumstances rendered 
this course advisable. The prestige of such " im- 



THE OPEN DOOR 107 

perialism " would not arouse much jealousy if the 
nationals of the Power exercising it enjoyed no 
commercial or other advantages save such incidental 
ones as were unavoidably associated with the flag. 
Moreover, such incidental gains could be fairly 
apportioned by an international policy which dis- 
tributed this work of protection and control fairly 
among the Governments of the civilized nations. 
Such are the general principles for the realization 
of the Open Door. If the civilized nations 
could be brought to assent to the early extension 
of complete Free Trade and other free economic 
opportunities in all their home and colonial pos- 
sessions, this achievement of full economic inter- 
nationalism would afford a complete security for 
peace among the great States. But granting, as 
we must, that the financial situation of all European 
nations after this war, to say nothing of the political 
antagonisms and the impulses towards national 
economic self-sufficiency, will render any early 
movement towards such Free Trade impossible, 
can we not aim and hope to secure such a measure 
of the Open Door as we have here indicated? 
As regards equality of opportunity in existing 
colonies and protectorates, there are two practical 
obstacles to be overcome. One is the preferential 
tariffs of our self-governing dominions, the other 
those of the French colonies and protectorates. 
Is either obstacle insuperable? Though fiscal 
arrangements lie completely within the rights of 
self-government enjoyed by our dominions, the 
closer imperial relations likely to result from this 
war ought to make it an easy matter to secure a 



io8 THE OPEN DOOR 

withdrawal of preferences primarily conceived 
as favours to the Mother Country, especially 
when such withdrawal would open to them, as 
to us, certain liberties of trade with the possessions 
of other Powers at present withheld. 

The colonial system of France is so deeply 
rooted in Protection as to present graver difficulties. 
But even they should not be insuperable in view of 
the great commercial compensations and financial 
economies which the establishment of an Open 
Door would secure to her. Her colonial markets 
form a small proportion of her oversea trade ; 
most of this she would probably retain under free 
competition by motives of affection, habit, and 
prestige. By assenting to what might appear some 
present sacrifice, she would secure herself against 
the positive loss of the equal right of entrance 
she has hitherto enjoyed into the colonies of Great 
Britain, Germany, and Holland, and she would 
avoid the expensive and perilous pressures towards 
a pushful colonial policy which her financiers and 
commercial classes have constantly exercised upon 
her Government. 

The size and value of trade preferences in exist- 
ing colonies and protectorates ought not to be 
able to bar acceptance of the Open Door if the 
essential ' importance of this policy is made 
apparent. Nor should the more definitely con- 
structive application of the doctrine to the political 
control and the economic exploitation of backward 
countries not yet absorbed prove impracticable. 
For, if economic monopolies and preferences are 
once extracted, political imperialism becomes an 



THE OPEN DOOR 109 

empty shell, an illusion of quantitative power con- 
ceived in idle terms of area and population. Even 
if we suppose that some of the distinctively political 
and sentimental supports of colonialism and im- 
perialism survive, they will be greatly weakened 
in their hold of foreign policy, and, lacking the 
pushful direction of the business man, will be un- 
likely to engender dangerous disputes. Once 
convert the Open Door into a genuinely constructive 
policy of international co-operation, for the peaceful 
development of the undeveloped resources of the 
world, administered by impartial internationally 
minded men in the interests of the society of nations 
and with proper regard to the claims of the inhabi- 
tants of backward countries, a political support 
will have been found for that great and complex 
but hitherto " ungoverned " system of economic 
internationalism which has come into being during 
recent generations. The dangerous collisions 
between the forces of political nationalism and of 
economic internationalism would thus be obviated, 
not by denial of the claims of the former but by 
the political control of the latter. 



THE 

PARALLEL 
OF THE 
GREAT 
FRENCH WAR 



THE PARALLEL OF THE GREAT 
FRENCH WAR 

By IRENE COOPER WILLIS 

We are in a war of a peculiar nature. ... It is with an 
armed doctrine that we are at war. . . . This new system . . . 
in France cannot be rendered safe by any art . . . it must be 
destroyed or — it will destroy all Europe. 

Burke's " Letters on a Regicide Peace," 1796. 

Over a distance of a hundred and twenty years 
Burke's thundering phrases travel, in striking 
accord with the denunciations of the militarism of 
the enemy of the moment. The circumstances of 
the two great wars — the war with revolutionary 
France and the present war with Germany — have 
been regarded by many people, the Prime 
Minister l among them, as similar in their legal 
and moral aspects. Then, as now, it has been said, 
the war arose out of an attack upon Belgium, and 
the challenge was accepted by the reluctant and 
peace-loving Pitt exactly as it was accepted by 
Mr. Asquith and Sir Edward Grey in August 
1 91 4.2 We are told that we fought France then 

1 Mr. Asquith's speech at Edinburgh, September 19, 1914. 

2 The Times' Literary Supplement review of " The War 
Speeches of William Pitt," May 27, 1915. 

8 1I3 



ii4 THE PARALLEL OF 

for the rights of small nations and for honour just 
as now we are fighting their latest assailant, Ger- 
many. Now, as then, it is said, European liberties 
are being threatened by a Power aiming at world- 
dominion and arrogating to herself the right to 
destroy treaties. Now again, it is declared, almost 
in Burke's language, there can be no peace 
until the militarism of the enemy is utterly 
destroyed. 

The purpose of this chapter is not, however, 
to show the likeness in rhetorical onslaught upon 
the enemy between the war which we entered upon 
in 1793 and that which we are engaged in to-day. 
Such evidence would be more useful to a psycho- 
logical survey of the literature of all wars, for 
which survey English newspapers and pamphlets 
belonging to the three European wars in which 
England has taken part in modern times provide 
ample material. In passing, it may be said that 
not one of the philippics by which English 
statesmen and English men of letters are now 
marshalling their countrymen against Germany has 
not done equally good service on previous occa- 
sions. Only in 1793 it was France under whose 
foot European liberties were being crushed, it 
was France against whose treason, blasphemy, and 
murder a holy war was being waged ; and 
in the Crimean War we were fighting Russia 
for the sake of civilization and Turkey, in 
espousing whose quarrel it was said that we were 
backing the cause of freedom and progress against 
tyranny and despotism. 

But the object of these pages is to represent 



THE GREAT FRENCH WAR 115 

the situation of that far-distant war with revolu- 
tionary France as much as possible in the light of 
its opening circumstances and as it was viewed 
by men who, on this question, differed from 
Burke. 

To accept Burke's opinion, without reference 
to other contemporary opinions, is a real return 
to his attitude but not a real return to his times. 
If it is desirable to go back to previous wars in 
order to fortify our conviction of England's con- 
stant intervention on the side of righteousness, 
it is better to go back as completely as the records 
of history permit us to go. 

The average reference to the war with France 
in 1793 is apt to neglect the various stages of 
its long-drawn-out fury. Its first justification is 
considered as identical with that which at last 
really sustained it, namely the necessity of de- 
fending England and of delivering Europe from 
the ambitions of an insatiable despot. It is for- 
gotten what share the war itself had in promoting 
that despotism, and to what extent the European 
Powers were responsible for its alliance with the 
principles of 1789. 

Historians of all political tempers agree in the 
conclusion that war with the revolutionary govern- 
ment of France, as undertaken by Austria and 
Prussia in 1792, far from weakening the influence 
of the Jacobins, on the contrary, did everything to 
establish their savage rule by enabling them to 
identify their authority with the defence of the 
country against invasion. Whether or not the worst 
revolutionary horrors were inspired by the panic of 



n6 THE PARALLEL OF 

invasion and under the menace of the Duke of 
Brunswick's manifesto and his subsequent march 
upon Paris, it is certain that the national peril 
alone united the warring civil factions and brought 
about that Jacobin supremacy which so hideously 
perverted the original revolutionary principles. 
Napoleon himself hated the Jacobins, and the 
majority of Frenchmen, who were not Terrorists, 
bent beneath the Terror's abominable yoke for 
the same reason that the majority of the people in 
any country, so insulted, so surrounded by ad- 
vancing armies, as France was, abandon internal 
differences, however vital, and, with a united 
front, face the enemy. 

Most historians also agree that the violation of 
the neutrality of the Scheldt was not the cause but 
merely the occasion of England's entry into the 
war. Neither in its actual nature nor in its influence 
upon governmental and popular opinion can it 
be compared to Germany's recent violation of 
Belgium. It was a misdemeanour, not a crime. 

If it was a crime, then we ourselves had been 
criminally guilty a few years previously, for in 
1784 we had been quite willing that Austria should 
commit the same breach of treaty rights respecting 
the navigation of the Scheldt upon conditions that 
did not include any reference to Holland's wishes 
in the matter. Holland in 1793 did not appeal 
for our assistance, though it was reported that 
prayers were offered in some of her churches that 
she might be spared from being plunged into war. 
The letters from Lord Grenville to the British 
Minister at The Hague, in December 1792 and 



THE GREAT FRENCH WAR 117 

January 1793, 1 show his anxiety lest the Dutch 
should not interpret the French decree opening; the 
Scheldt as an act of aggression, and his recog- 
nition that, until they so interpreted it, he was 
in an uncomfortable position. 

Still more, if it was a crime, the Napoleonic wars 
perpetuated it, for one of their indisputable results, 
paraded by England with every show of gratifica- 
tion, was the freeing of the navigation of all the 
great rivers of Europe. 

That it was considered a misdemeanour of slight 
importance compared to the other grounds we had 
for wishing to take part in the war is shown by 
the fact that the French Ambassador's, M. 
Chauvelin's, written offer to Lord Grenville to 
negotiate concerning the Scheldt and to give an 
immediate pledge to be bound by the Belgians' 
wishes in the matter after the close of the war 
with Austria was ignored by the English Foreign 
Minister as irrelevant. 

Refusal to negotiate, refusal to state clearly what 
were the causes of complaint and the satisfaction 
demanded, before assuming that the case of strict 
necessity for war had arrived, were, as Fox and 
the Opposition of that day so often urged, the 
strongest proof that the true cause of the war was 
not the specific aggressions (the opening of the 
Scheldt, the decree of November 19, 1792), but 
the necessity, already proclaimed by the conti- 
nental Powers in such violent language, of inter- 
fering with the internal government of France and 
of restoring the Bourbon monarchy. 

1 Auckland MSS., vol. xxxv, 383, 469. 



n8 THE PARALLEL OF 

The French had no desire for war. That much 
is evident from the correspondence between Lord 
Grenville and M. Chauvelin, whose pacific inten- 
tions, though diplomatically tactless actions, led 
him to submit to innumerable slights from the 
Foreign Office rather than relinquish his endeavours 
to maintain peace, and is further evidenced by 
Robespierre's angry attack upon Brissot for not 
having avoided war. 

Negotiations might, indeed, have proved a 
failure in the furious state of the times, amid the 
indignation and hatred naturally produced in 
England by the September massacres, and, above 
all, by the execution of Louis in January 1793, 
and, too, with that discordant Convention which 
in Paris, amid the uproar of a Revolution, 
was issuing inflated decrees and strutting with 
pride at the triumph of its armies over the 
invader. 

But to have shown a disposition to negotiate 
would have exonerated England from the charge 
of being the aggressor, and, moreover, a definite 
statement of her case would have dissociated her 
from the purpose of the allied kings and would 
have cleared her from the suspicion that she was 
acting 1 in any degree on their principles. 

Those purposes, however, England cannot dis- 
avow, nor can she clear herself from that suspicion. 
The reason does not lie only in the fact that when 
the war had begun her ministers openly availed 
themselves of the arguments with which the party 
which Burke inspired had, since the outbreak of 
the Revolution, been inflaming people's minds 



THE GREAT FRENCH WAR 119 

against France as the centre of a deadly and 
infectious anarchy, but in the explicit official 
declarations of the Government. There is an 
admission from Pitt himself (December 9, 1795) 
that the war was undertaken to prevent the pro- 
gress of French principles and to re-establish the 
hereditary monarchy : "I certainly said that the 
war was not, like others, occasioned by particular 
insult, or the unjust seizure of territory, or the 
like, but undertaken to repel usurpation, connected 
with principles calculated to subvert all govern- 
ment." And this was the note of our declaration 
after taking Toulon in November 1793 ; no other 
object of the war other than the restitution of the 
French monarchy was then mentioned. 

What moved Pitt from his apparently inflexible 
determination to preserve England's neutrality in 
the war between France and the Allied Powers 
cannot be referred to any single specific cause. 
His own hatred of the Revolution had, it is true, 
been openly expressed, but, in his ministerial 
capacity, he, at first, saw little to fear and much 
to gain from France's collapse as a Great Power, 
and this conviction was for a time proof against 
all the appeals on behalf of the safety of Louis, 
the danger to the Austrian Netherlands, and the 
moral considerations which Burke had for long 
urged as an overwhelming case for war. Nor 
was our alliance with Prussia ever mentioned either 
by Prussia or ourselves as a reason for our inter- 
vention, a fact which is in itself evidence that 
Austria and Prussia knew very well that they were 
the aggressors in 1792, since, by the terms of 



120 THE PARALLEL OF 

that alliance, England was bound to give help to 
Prussia if the latter were attacked. 

England's case against France was essentially 
a cumulative one, and a careful survey of all the 
circumstances admits of very little doubt that some, 
and not unimportant, determinants of Pitt's change 
of attitude must be sought in the state of political 
affairs in England, and in his desire to divide the 
Whigs and, above all, to break the power of his 
great rival, Charles James Fox. Pitt was one 
of the most consummate opportunists that ever 
dominated English politics. He played in 1792 
and 1793 a stupendous game and, for his 
purposes, he enlisted the fear of the French Revo- 
lution which Burke was brandishing. Whether 
Pitt cared for power for its own sake or for 
the sake of his country's advancement, it is diffi- 
cult to deny that in 1792 he was more concerned 
to compass the downfall of the Whigs and to 
strengthen himself in office than to avoid what he 
then considered an inevitable war with the French. 
The Court, aristocracy, and clergy were for war, 
the country was worked up to the pitch of accept- 
ing it, if necessary, and Pitt's personal preference 
for peace stood against the interests of his own 
party and his own position. War presented an 
opportunity of consolidating 4 the latter and, at the 
same time, of creating a division among the 
Whigs whereby Fox's power would be permanently 
crippled, and Pitt seized the opportunity. His 
optimism concerning the probable short duration 
of the war no doubt made the venture seem less 
tremendous than we, looking back over those 



THE GREAT FRENCH WAR 121 

twenty-two years of almost incessant warfare, can 
pronounce it to be, and to his patriotic motives 
the following extract from The Times l of Feb- 
ruary 8, 1793, the day before the French 
declaration of war reached England, supplies a 
hint :— 

" France is the only Power whose maritime 
force has hitherto been a balance to that of Great 
Britain and whose commerce has rivalled ours in 
the two worlds, whose intrigues have fomented 
and kept alive ruinous wars in India. Could 
England succeed in destroying the naval strength 
of her rival, could she turn the tide of that rich 
commerce which has so often excited her jealousy 
in favour of her own country, could she connect 
herself with the French establishments in either 
India, the degree of commercial prosperity to which 
these kingdoms would then be elevated would 
exceed all calculations. It would not be the work 
of a few years only but would require ages for 
France to recover to the political balance of Europe 
that preponderance which she enjoyed previous to 
the Revolution. Such is the point of view under 
which Governments ought to consider the com- 
mercial interests. The indispensable necessity of 
extinguishing the wide-spreading fire whose devour- 
ing flames will sooner or later extend over all 
Europe and the well-grounded confidence of dis- 
embarrassing the commerce of Great Britain from 
the impediments which have so often clogged its 
wheels — these reasons, added to the prospect of 

1 The Times then, as in 1914, supported the war policy of the 
Ministry. 



122 



THE PARALLEL OF 



annihilating the French marine, ought to deter- 
mine us to immediate war." 

Burke, whatever the grounds of his fanatical 
devotion to aristocracy, was whole-hearted in his 
hatred of the Revolution and in his indignation 
at its excesses. Only his real conviction that the 
English Constitution was in danger from a Jacobin 
party in England, bent upon the same hideous 
drama as was being enacted in Paris, made him 
break with a party and a friend with whom he 
had worked for years in close agreement and to 
associate himself with Pitt, whose political measures 
it had been that party's constant aim to combat 
His grounds for believing in the existence of 
revolutionary conspiracy' were no sounder than 
those upon which in the " Reflections upon the 
French Revolution" he arraigned the principles 
of 1789 The prophecy of that amazing pamphlet 
was indeed to a great extent fulfilled, but the 
temper which it and its author encouraged, in 
England and on the Continent, had not a little to 
do with the fulfilment. 

. The value which ministers attached to this argument and, 
at the same time, the difficulty of getting enough evidence to 
Istantiate it, is shown in the following extract from Lord 
GrenviUe's letter to Lord Auckland in January 1793 • We have 
some idea of laying before a secret committee of the 5 two 
Houses (very small in number) some particulars of the designs 
which have'been in agitation here, enough to enable them 
without reporting particular facts, and still less names or papers 
Tn mes, indeed, they need not know), to say that they are ^satisfied 
hat such plans have been in agitation. Could J°» suppty £ 
with anything that might tend to the same object I ""»«"?* 
very useful in the view of embarking the nation heart.iy n the 
lupport of a war if unavoidable" (Auckland MSS. xxxv. 381). 



THE GREAT FRENCH WAR 123 

The "Reflections," it should be remembered, 
were published in the autumn of 1790, in the 
halcyon days of the Revolution, while the doings 
of the French Constituent Assembly were still a 
matter for rejoicing on the part of the majority 
of enlightened people in England, while France, 
busy with domestic reform, desired above all peace 
with her neighbours and freedom from inter- 
ference. « In those days and continuously from 
then, Burke preached his crusade against France, 
in constant communication with the continental 
Powers who plotted to crush her liberties. 
11 Diffuse terror ! " Burke wrote to the emigrant 
princes, and he had the satisfaction of seeing; his 
injunctions obeyed. Abroad, he conspired ; at 
home, he incited. He was the never-failing in- 
spiration of British Tories in their denunciation 
of the Revolution ; in and out of Parliament, in 
and out of season, he persisted in his magnificent 
abuse, and in his determination to assist a war 
with F ranee, " to keep the French infection from 
this country, their principles from our minds, and 

1 The first National Assembly of France had an early oppor- 
tunity of proving its pacific foreign policy in the Nootka Sound 
crisis between England and Spain in the autumn of 1790. Spain, 
under the terms of her alliance with France, claimed the latter's 
help in the event of war with England, which seemed possible. 
The French Assembly unhesitatingly contradicted the views of the 
Kino's ministers on this point, and issued a declaration that no 
war & could be entered upon without its assent, at the same time 
repudiating all wars of conquest or aggression, and, as an earnest 
of its pacific intentions, it ordered the chained figures of con- 
quered nations which ornamented the statue of Louis XIV to be 
removed. 



124 THE PARALLEL OF 

their daggers from our hearts." "It is with an 
armed doctrine that we are at war," he wrote in 
1796. He had himself helped to arm it, and it 
was the weight of his armour which prolonged 
the war. 

Peace might have been secured in 1793. The 
professed objects of the war were then attained. 
Dumourier had been driven out of Holland, the 
Austrian Netherlands were secure. The French 
made offers of peace, but we rejected them as 
providing " no indemnity for the past or security 
for the future." Obligations to Austria for her 
assistance, in saving Holland were mentioned as 
one reason for continuing the war, and England 
was then pledged, by the repeated statements of 
her ministers and by the complexity of her 
continental engagements, to a war for the exter- 
mination of Jacobin principles, the likelihood of 
the success of which seemed as far off as the 
stars. Again it was said, as it had been said so 
often during the American War, that if the cause 
of the enemy were to be successful, there would 
be an end of all civilized government, and the 
monarchy of England would be trodden in the 
dust. In vain Fox pointed out the hopelessness 
of such an undertaking, and its inconsistency with 
the war's professed aims. " A war to exterminate 
principles," he declared, " will mean a war to 
all eternity." " The human mind is roused by 
oppression." " Impotent are the men who think 
that opinions can be so encountered. There are 
some things which are more successfully van- 
quished by neglect." He reminded Pitt of Lord 



THE GREAT FRENCH WAR 125 

Chatham's oath, that he would die in the last 
breach before he granted the independence of 
America, and that one of the first of his own 
political acts had been to sign the independence 
which his father had so abhorred. 

In the autumn of 1795 tne King's Speech to 
Parliament indicated for the first time, though 
vaguely, a willingness to consider the possibility 
of peace. The idea, until then declared so 
ignominious, improper, and degrading, of con- 
sidering the Government of France as one with 
which any peaceful relations could possibly be 
maintained, was giving way, under the pressure 
of social distress, financial difficulties, unrest in 
Ireland, and recognition of the unreliability of our 
allies, to a longing throughout the country to have 
done with war. Curious inconsistencies even then 
marked the position and the language of ministers. 
Though Robespierre had fallen, there was very 
little reason in Pitt's main argument that the exist- 
ing Government of France was more capable than 
any of its predecessors had been of maintaining 
foreign relations. At least, its predecessors had 
not been less capable. Prussia's example might 
have reassured us on this point. Prussia, who 
during 1794 had only been induced to keep her 
army in the field by the subsidy we gave her, 
and even then had done her best to avoid any 
fighting, had concluded peace with France six 
months previously, and was at that moment reap- 
ing 1 the fruits of her faith in France's stability of 
government in being able to devote her attention 
entirely to Poland. From the beginning, France 



126 THE PARALLEL OF 

had been capable of maintaining foreign relations ; 
there had been no complaints from neutrals that 
the Brissot Government, or even Robespierre him- 
self, had failed in their contracted engagements. 1 

Moreover, the reason from which ministers 
appeared to derive such comfort, that France 
was then in the greatest possible distress, and 
her Government possibly on the point of collapsing 
altogether, seemed hardly the best encouragement 
that security in respect to treaties could at last 
be counted upon. 

Finally, we had let slip the opportunity of 
making peace to Holland's advantage and security, 
and had chosen to wait until she was again lost, 
though we had her colonies in our safe keeping, 2 
and the aggrandizement of France was certainly 
less defeated than it had ever been. 3 

1 We ourselves were not particularly scrupulous towards 
neutrals. We threatened Switzerland, Genoa, and Tuscany, 
because they had not abandoned a neutrality which we con- 
sidered criminal. This was our behaviour to small States who 
had not been aggressed upon, nor were inclined to be aggressive, 
in a war which we had entered upon in order to protect the small 
and weak, and towards which we had declared that we should 
have remained neutral if it had not been for specific aggressions. 

2 Including the Cape of Good Hope and Ceylon, which were 
described in the confidential sketch of the proposed terms framed 
by the Ministry for submission to the King as " the most valuable 
of our conquests " (Dropmore Papers, iii. 239-42). We gave 
back the Cape to Holland in the Peace of 1802, but kept Ceylon. 

3 In neither of these respects — i.e. the freedom of Holland and 
the check to French aggrandizement — were the circumstances of 
the Peace of 1802 any better. By the Peace of Amiens France 
retained possession of Holland, Belgium, the left bank of the 
Rhine, Italy, and Switzerland. From the commercial point of 



THE GREAT FRENCH WAR 127 

Such were the circumstances which called forth 
Burke's " Letters on a Regicide Peace," the last 
furious outpouring of his unquenchable hatred of 
the Revolution, which had already done so much 
to multiply its consequences. 

" What, you would treat with regicides and 
assassins ! " cried Burke, flinging his dying 
strength into passionate denouncement of his 
countrymen's disposition to relax hostility against 
an enemy he himself would have defied to eternity. 
" This false reptile prudence," " these oglings and 
glances of tenderness," he said, ill became a 
proud nation. " We are not at the end of the 
struggle, nor near it. Let us not deceive ourselves, 
we are at the beginnings of great troubles." 

It is very magnificent, almost Promethean, this 
inexorable determination of Burke's to be on no 
terms whatever with those of whose incurable 
iniquity he was persuaded, and to delude no one 
that he minimized the dangers and the length of 
the struggle, a determination growing stronger and 
more embittered with the increasing evidence of 
the insuperableness of the undertaking. 

Burke's influence at this period, however, could 
not prevent negotiations, which took place be- 
latedly, and failed. The failure arose out of a 
specific question, the restoration of the Austrian 
Netherlands, concerning which we were pledged 
to Austria, and does not add to, or detract from, the 

view as well, the terms of 1802 were most unfavourable to us, as 
they left the prohibitive tariff which France had imposed against 
us on the Continent still in force. England's actual indemnities 
were Ceylon and Trinidad. 



128 THE PARALLEL OF 

arguments advanced by Burke. These reach 
beyond particular circumstances, beyond the imme- 
diate context of the war with revolutionary France, 
as also do the answers which Charles James Fox 
repeatedly made to them. 

" Shall we treat with regicides and assassins? " 
said Fox, investing the question with all the scorn 
and horror of Burke's gestures. " What ! Treat 
with men whose hands are yet reeking with the 
blood of their sovereign ! Yes, assuredly we should 
treat with them. With them, be whom they may, 
we ought and ultimately must treat who have the 
Government in their hands." "Where the power 
essentially resides, thither we ought to go for 
peace." " If the contrary were true, if we treat with 
France only when she has a Government of which 
we approve, good God ! " said Fox, " we shall 
fight eternally." Were we, he asked, to stake 
the wealth, the commerce, and the Constitution of 
Great Britain on the probability of compelling the 
French to renounce certain opinions for which it 
had already been seen they were prepared to con- 
tend to the last extremity? France should suffer 
the penalty of her own injustice. Why were the 
people of England to suffer because the people 
of France were unjust? " We would never treat 
with the present Government of France " ! Was 
it likely that the French Government would ever 
negotiate for its own destruction? Or was evi- 
dence of a more peaceful demeanour to be obtained 
in war? Could it be said to the enemy, " Until 
you shall in war behave in a peaceable manner, we 
will not treat with you "? " That two nations 



THE GREAT FRENCH WAR 129 

should be set on to beat one another into friend- 
ship is too abominable/' said Fox, " even for the 
fiction of romance, but for a statesman to lay it 
down as a system upon which he means to act 
is monstrous." " It is in the nature of war to 
widen, not to approximate." 

" What ! you would treat with tyrants? Why 
not? " answered Fox. " Do we not daily treat 
with tyrants? I would have treated with Robes- 
pierre, not because I did not think his Govern- 
ment the most detestable tyranny that ever existed 
but because England has nothing to do with his 
tyranny." The question was, he said, not what 
degree of abhorrence ought to be felt of French 
cruelty but what line of conduct ought to be pur- 
sued consistent with British policy, which had 
hitherto accepted the theory that every independent 
nation had a right to regulate its own government. 
To deny this, Fox said, was to act upon a set of 
most unprincipled delicacies, to which no heed at 
all was paid when committing the national honour 
and safety into the hands of allies. From minis- 
terial indifference to the conduct of the allies 
towards Poland, Fox said that he could only infer 
this maxim : " Make peace with no man of whose 
good conduct you are not satisfied, but make an 
alliance with any man no matter how profligate 
or faithless he may be." 

" Whatever our detestation of the guilt of foreign 
nations may be, we are not called upon to play 
the part of avengers." " Hatred of vice is no 
just cause of war between nations," he argued. 
44 If it were, good God ! with which of those 

9 



130 PARALLEL OF GREAT FRENCH WAR 

Powers with whom we are now combined should 
we be at peace? Security? Are we never to have 
peace because that peace may be insecure? A 
state of peace immediately after a war of such vio- 
lence must in some respect be a state of insecurity. 
We must be satisfied with the best security we 
can get : it will, at any rate, be not less secure 
than a state of war. To go on fighting 1 as ja 
speculation, that perchance we may gain a better 
peace some time hence — what can this do but add 
to the sum of human horrors? Is war a state 
of probation? Is peace a rash system? Is it 
dangerous for nations to live in amity? " 

These extracts from, and abridgments of, Fox's 
speeches r show the other side of the war against 
the " armed doctrine " to that to which politicians 
and writers of to-day think fit to call attention. 
They show it as no " other side " has ever again 
been shown, for these " bones of a giant," as 
Lord Erskine called the speeches, edited as they 
were from rough notes, communicate the wisdom 
and much of the brilliancy of expression of one 
of the greatest of English orators and most honest 
of English statesmen. 

Burke and Fox were once companions. The 
French war parted them. It is due to their 
memory, as well as to the memory of their times, 
that, when the spirit of the one is recalled, that 
of the other should not be forgotten. 

1 "Speeches of C. J. Fox." Edited by Wright. With a 
Preface by Lord Erskine. 1815. 



WAR 

AND THE 
WOMAN'S 
MOVEMENT 



WAR AND THE WOMAN'S MOVEMENT 

By A. MAUDE ROYDEN 

Among the influences making for international 
understanding, the Woman's Movement has been 
reckoned by its supporters to be one of the 
strongest. This was before the war. The latest 
International Congress held by the Suffrage 
Alliance, in Budapest, 191 3, bad not only impressed 
all who followed its deliberations by its numbers, 
enthusiasm, and unanimity, but also by the intensity 
of feeling with which many of the most brilliant 
speakers sought to enlist the women of the world 
in la guerre contre la guerre. 

It is true that the passion for peace — the horror 
of war— was expressed by continental and rarely 
by British or American delegates. This fact only 
served to remind the latter of the grim reality 
of the war problem in countries like Germany and 
France, and perhaps to create the feeling that our 
own interest in it might not always be so academic 
as to most of us it persisted in seeming. Cer- 
tainly one of the inspiring motives of the Congress 
was the hope that a movement, international, like 
that represented by the Suffrage Alliance, which 

brought together in a common hope the women 

133 



134 WAR AND THE WOMAN'S MOVEMENT 

of America, Asia, 1 and Europe, must tend to create 
the good feeling which in its turn makes for peace. 
Delegates were reminded that women know the 
suffering of war without its glory ; that its horror 
and its sacrifices come to them shorn of the 
glamour with which men have surrounded it ; that 
it destroys all they hold dear and all they have 
created ; that they have nothing to gain by it and 
everything to lose. A speech made in this sense 
by the most eloquent woman there — Mme Marie 
Verone — brought her audience to its feet in a frenzy 
of enthusiasm, clapping, waving, and cheering, 
while those fortunate enough to be on the plat- 
form precipitated themselves upon the orator with 
cries of enthusiasm, and kissed her on both cheeks 
with an abandon somewhat surprising to the more 
stolid British delegates. It was evident that there 
was no doubt in the minds of these enthusiasts as 
to the attitude of the Woman's Movement towards 
war. 

Conviction was deepened by the great chapter 
on " Women and War " appearing in Olive 
Schreiner's "Woman and Labour." Expressing 
with a noble idealism the right attitude of women 
towards war, Olive Schreiner gave to an emotion 
its philosophy. Women, she said, were not only 
the worst sufferers from war: they were by nature 
the guardians of life. Conservers of the race, 
mothers of its children, war must be to them 

1 No Asiatic delegates were actually present at Budapest, but 
a Chinese Suffrage Society applied for affiliation, and was 
admitted. The Chinese women sent a banner to the Congress 
inscribed, " All of one mind, helping each other." 



WAR AND THE WOMAN'S MOVEMENT 135 

the worst of all catastrophes. As a sculptor would 
cast into the breach any stone rather than that 
which he had wrought into a statue, so women, 
when the gulf opens between the nations, would 
cast in anything rather than the men they have 
made. " No woman who is a woman," writes 
Mrs. Schreiner, " says of a human body, ' It is 
nothing.' " This phrase, like the whole chapter 
in which it appears, became a classic of the 
Woman's Movement. It was believed to express 
the true, the inevitable attitude of women as a 
sex, whether in or outside the progressive ranks. 
It was assumed to be so " natural " to them, 
that to put power into their hands was to forge 
a weapon against war. It was not denied that 
they might feel that war might in some cases 
still be a national duty ; but it was believed with 
conviction that women, from their very nature, 
would approach the question with an unspeakable 
reluctance, that war would appear to them in all 
its naked horror, shorn of glory, that they would 
be free from the " war fever " to which men so 
easily fall victims. 

In support of this view, it is to be borne in 
mind that women's internationalism has on the 
whole broken down less conspicuously than men's, 
two international congresses having been held since 
the war began, and both representing women. It 
is probably also true that among working people 
the desire for peace is still stronger among the 
women than the men. On the other hand, the 
belief that women are innately more pacific than 
men has been severely shaken, if not altogether 



136 WAR AND THE WOMAN'S MOVEMENT 

destroyed. It is now very evident that they can 
be as virulently militarist, as blindly partisan, not 
as the soldier, for in him such qualities are 
generally absent, but as the male non-combatant, 
for whom the same cannot always be said. Among 
women, as among men, there are extremists for 
war and for peace ; pacifists and militarists ; 
women who are as passionately convinced as 
Bernhardi that war is a good thing, women who 
accept it as a terrible necessity, women who 
repudiate it altogether. All these views they 
share with men. There appears to be no 
cleavage of opinion along sex lines. Nor 
perhaps should we have expected it. History 
shows no war averted by the influence of 
women ; none against which women, as women, 
have worked, or organized, or offered more than 
here and there a sporadic protest. Queens have 
been no more reluctant than kings to look on the 
dead bodies of men and say, " It is nothing." 
The fact that war brings to women personally 
no glory, but only suffering, is empty of signi- 
ficance ; they are well accustomed to vicarious 
glory and well accustomed to suffering. The 
appeal to their loyalty comes with irresistible force. 
" We cannot fight," they say ; "let us at least 
be willing to suffer." 

Not what is noble only, but what is ignoble 
in women, is enlisted easily in the service of war. 
The importance of fear as a factor in war-making 
cannot be overlooked, and can hardly be over- 
estimated. Any politician can play on panic when 
he wishes to stampede a people into war. The 



WAR AND THE WOMAN'S MOVEMENT 137 

fear of being attacked enables him to blind them, 
and makes them an easy tool for a war which is 
really one of aggression. And in the creation 
of panic a sex trained to timidity is hardly likely 
to play a restraining part. Personal courage is 
the one quality held indispensable in a man : it 
has not been extraordinarily admired in women, 
and since fear is the mother of cruelty, it should 
not surprise any of us if those who have never 
been expected to be brave should sometimes outdo 
the men in vindictiveness. That so many women 
remain untainted by fear should rather give us 
hope. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to remember 
that so long as fear plays a part in the making 
of wars, women are hardly likely as a sex to 
be more uncompromising in their desire for peace 
than men. 

It should, therefore, have surprised no one 
(though, in fact, it surprised many of us) that 
women throughout Europe have accepted war as 
an inevitable evil, or even, in the earnestness of 
their loyalty, as a spiritual good. Nor does their 
attitude towards war in general, or this war in 
particular, prove those wrong who have believed 
that the Woman's Movement is one of the great 
influences making for peace. It is true that its 
effect will not be so direct or so obvious as had 
been supposed. The mistake has been rather about 
the nature of its influence than about its ultimate 
effect. Women may, when they have the power, 
no more " vote against war " than men ; it remains 
a fact that every woman who is working for the 
advance of the Woman's Movement is, however 



138 WAR AND THE WOMAN'S MOVEMENT 

martial she is herself, however profoundly she may 
mistake the meaning and the foundation of her 
work, working against militarism. She is for ever 
asserting a principle of which war is a perpetual 
denial. One principle must, in the end, destroy 
the other. 

The Woman's Movement in all its aspects, but 
especially, of course, in its political one, is an 
assertion of moral force as the supreme govern- 
ing force in the world. If its adherents are wrong, 
and it is physical force which is " the ultimate 
appeal," then the militarist is right, and the 
physically weaker sex, like the little and weak 
nation, has no claim that may not be set aside. 
The weak have no rights in a world governed 
by brute force ; they have only privileges, which 
may be granted, revoked, or withheld. It has 
been the fundamental principle of the Woman's 
Movement that it claims rights and duties, but 
never privileges. By what right, however, do those 
who are inferior in physical force ask to share, 
equally with their superiors, in government, if 
government rests on physical force? Such a claim 
could not be entertained. And women, recogniz- 
ing this, have rightly based their demand on the 
great principle that government rests upon consent, 
and that the use of physical force is not " the 
ultimate appeal," but a confession of failure. 

Argument has raged round this vital question, 
and in consequence the women's position— and that 
of the opposition to it — has been again and again 
defined. The " physical force argument " has been 
put forward with gireat effect and with an 'enthu- 



WAR AND THE WOMAN'S MOVEMENT 139 

siasm no Bernhardi could exceed by notable Anti- 
Suffragists. 1 In their writings and speeches the 
conviction that women could have no right to self- 
government while they lacked physical strength to 
enforce it has been expounded in terms which 
almost grotesquely resemble the expositions of 
" Prussianism " and the treatment of " little 
nations " which have burned themselves with 
such horror into our memories to-day. " The 
State is Power," says Treitschke ; "there is 
something laughable in the idea of a small State." 
What power? Certainly not moral power, for 
there may be a greater moral power in a little 
State than a big one. But physical power, in 
which the big State must be superior. " There is 
something laughable " in the idea that a little State, 
a people wanting in sheer force of numbers and 
arms, should dream of independence, of freedom, 
of developing along its own lines its own civiliza- 
tion. " Something laughable " ! There is also 
something obscene in such laughter— something 
unimaginably brutal. The same brutality (though 
we had not learned to call it " Prussianism ") found 
something laughable in the idea that women, who 
are inferior to men in muscle, should claim as 
11 rights " what could (if allowed at all) never be 
more than privileges in a world ruled by brute 
force. Certainly if the world is so ruled the claim 
does become laughable. Herein lay the weakness 
of the militant movement, which appealed to a 
principle which the whole Woman's Movement was 

1 See especially " The Physical Force Argument against 
Woman's Suffrage," by A. McCallum Scott. 



140 WAR AND THE WOMAN'S MOVEMENT 

concerned to deny. But even here, regardless of 
logic — or perhaps conscious of a deeper logic than 
their policy suggested — the women who resorted 
to violence frequently argued that they did so only 
to prove the utter failure of violence used against 
themselves. Nor can any misunderstanding on 
the part of Suffragists of their own position destroy 
the fact that it rests upon a principle which 
militarism denies. The strife between the two is 
internecine. Militarism and the Woman's Move- 
ment cannot exist together. Take a militarist 
religion like that of Islam, and you see women 
reduced to the lowest level of degradation ; a 
militarist legal code like the Code Napoleon, and 
you have women without human rights and only 
sex functions — breeders of potential soldiers 
merely ; a militarist civilization like that of 
Prussia, and again women without rights, almost 
without privileges, women lagging behind their 
sisters in other civilizations otherwise near akin 
to them. " You do not know what it is like to 
be a woman," said a prominent German Suffragist, 
"in a country which has built its whole existence 
on a successful war." 

As militarism waxes or wanes so, in inverse 
ratio, does the Woman's Movement. In Russia 
—a race essentially pacific, whatever criticisms may 
be brought against its Government — women hold 
a much higher position than in Germany. In 
France, a country once " militarist " to the core, 
but now no longer so, the Code Napoleon remains, 
the legacy of the arch-militarist, Napoleon ; but 
the higher level of civilization reached to-day 



WAR AND THE WOMAN'S MOVEMENT 141 

reflects itself in the improved actual (as distinct 
from the legal) position of French women. In 
Norway and Sweden, countries so earnest in their 
desire for peace that their division into two king- 
doms under separate sovereigns was actually 
effected (though with some soreness and jealousy) 
without a war, women have in one case actually 
achieved political freedom and in the other are 
upon the verge of it. In America women hold 
a high position, and are constantly improving it. 
In Great Britain both the friends and the foes of 
their movement illustrate the same truth. 

There has been— perhaps still is — a section of 
public opinion in this country which believes that 
the British Empire is held together by the sword. 
It has even been stated that India is " held at the 
point of the bayonet." The fact that for a long time 
our mighty Empire was seldom without its " little 
wars " somewhere along its vast frontiers gave 
colour to a belief which otherwise seems actually 
grotesque. And it is significant that the opponents 
of Women's Suffrage were largely drawn from 
the ranks of this school of imperialist thought. 
Their argument was developed along two lines : 
one, that women could take no part in the business 
of holding the Empire by the sword, the other 
that they could not " think imperially." The 
latter argument was frequently put forward by 
women so obviously capable of performing the 
duty whose possibility (to other women?) they 
earnestly denied, as to remove its sting and its 
effect. The former was the real line of defence, 
and as long as this Jingo school of imperialism 



142 WAR AND THE WOMAN'S MOVEMENT 

remains so long inevitably must there be an irre- 
concilable party of opposition to the Woman's 
Movement in this country. Its wane and the rising 
of a nobler conception of Empire has coincided 
with the gathering strength and power of that 
movement. Both spring from the same root — the 
belief that government, whether of a nation or 
an Empire, must rest upon consent, or confess its 
failure ; that moral force is not nobler only but 
stronger than coercion ; that an Empire " held at 
the point of the bayonet " must fall to pieces at 
the first shock of danger, while one in which there 
is freedom for the least as well as the greatest 
of its members stands " whole as the marble, 
founded as the rock." We do not imagine to- 
day that New Zealand, with its population of two 
or three millions, has less right to the free der- 
velopment of its own type of civilization than we 
with our fifty millions. We do not call that right 
a " privilege," or find " something laughable in 
the idea of a small State." We do not assume 
that there are no rights where there is not power 
to enforce them. On the contrary, we know that 
such rights can never be violated except at fearful 
cost to the violator. Not only does the act of 
injustice brutalize his conscience, but it vindicates 
again the principle which must at last react against 
him. Nations have assumed the rigtit to act solely 
in their own immediate interests so far as they 
have the power to do so ; but no nation can always 
be the strongest, and the time will come when 
another stronger arises, or many strong ones find 
their common interest against the violator, and 



WAR AND THE WOMAN'S MOVEMENT 143 

then the old insistence that might is right destroys 
what it had set up. 

In a deeper sense also the strong stand to lose 
by a violation of the rights of the weak. Mr. 
Lloyd George, in one of the noblest passages of 
a great speech at the beginning of the war, spoke 
of the debt owed by humanity to the little nations, 
who brought to its lips some of the " choicest 
wines." And we would add that even those little 
nations who have no specially glorious history, no 
radiant names, have yet enriched the civilization 
of the world by their difference and variety of 
type. To crush out all those who have the right 
to exist but not the power to enforce that right 
is to commend to one's own lips, not the " choice 
wine " of humanity but 

the bitter dregs of woe 
Which ever from the oppressed to the oppressor flow. 

The spirit which disregards this danger and 
despises this loss to civilization is " militarism " ; 
and those who assert that rights remain rights 
even when they cannot be enforced, and that the 
moral law violated by physical violence vindicates 
itself in the end by the destruction of the destroyer, 
are fighting against militarism, whether they desire 
it or not. The Woman's Movement is based on 
belief in the moral law. It is concerned to assert 
the supremacy of moral force, and it can show that 
wherever the rights of the weak are set aside there 
enters into the State an element of bitterness and 
hostility on the one side, of brutality and moral 



144 WAR AND THE WOMAN'S MOVEMENT 

stupidity on the other, which lowers its standard 
of strength and effectiveness as well as of moral 
nobility. 

It is true that although the principles of 
militarism and feminism are fundamentally 
opposed many people do not know it, ' and— 
since we are not a peculiarly logical race — many 
Englishmen and women who are genuinely shocked 
at Prussianism as expounded by Bernhardi and 
applied to Belgium, have themselves expatiated 
eloquently in the same vein when the question was 
of classes or sexes instead of nations. There are 
militarists who believe themselves feminist, and 
feminists who are undoubtedly militarist. And, 
after all, since we are most of us perfectly aware 
that " logic is not a science but a dodge," we 
must beware of dismissing a paradox merely 
because it involves an apparent contradiction. 
When, however, the contradiction is real — when 
the opposition between two principles is funda- 
mental — the human mind cannot for ever hold them 
both. One must drive out and destroy the other. 
Those feminists who had most closely thought 
out their position had already grasped the issue. 
When war broke out, and ordinary political activi- 
ties were necessarily suspended, it seemed to them 
as inevitable that they should take up the task of 
combating the real enemy of women (and of civi- 
lization) — militarism — as it was that they should 
take their share in the relief of the physical 
miseries and material burdens of war. There was 
no question of opposition to the war itself within 
the great Suffrage organizations, since the vast 



WAR AND THE WOMAN'S MOVEMENT 145 

majority of their members believed that war had 
been forced upon us and was, on our part, a battle 
against a militarist ideal. But there was a deep 
consciousness that the spirit of militarism is very 
hardly separated from the fact of war, and that 
this spirit is immovably opposed to the feminism 
which rests its whole claim on the supremacy of 
spiritual force. War, indeed, has its spiritual 
passion ; but the fact that this must find its ex- 
pression in the crudest forms of violence tends to 
exalt the latter at the expense of the former. 
Women can do no greater service to the world 
than to increase the healthy scepticism of violence 
as a method of imposing ideals which the history 
of religious persecution has already created. 

War may claim for itself the power to destroy 
and to clear the ground. It can never construct 
or create. It is not the means by which ideals 
are imposed. There is ultimately no way of com- 
bating a wrong idea but the setting forth of a 
right one. Whether they are right who believe 
that moral force is " the ultimate appeal " against 
which coercion is vain and violence merely a 
counsel of despair, or they who see in physical 
force the real basis of government, let time show. 
One thing at least is certain— that as the Woman's 
Movement embodies the one creed and " mili- 
tarism " the other, so these two must be in eternal 
opposition. The victory of one is the defeat of 
the other. Women, whatever other claim may be 
made for them, are not equal to men in their 
capacity to use force or their willingness to believe 
in it. For them, therefore, to ask for equal rights 

10 



146 WAR AND THE WOMAN'S MOVEMENT 

with men in a world governed by such force is 
frivolous. Their claim would not be granted, and 
if granted would not be valid. Like the negro 
vote in America, it would be a cheat and a delu- 
sion. But if moral power be the true basis of 
human relationship, then the Woman's Movement 
is on a sure foundation and moves to its inevitable 
triumph. Its victory will be an element in the 
making of permanent peace, not because women 
are less liable to " war fever " than men, or more 
reluctant to pay the great price of war, but because 
their claim and its fulfilment involves the assertion 
of that which war perpetually denies. 



THE 

ORGANIZATION 
OF PEACE 



THE ORGANIZATION OF PEACE 

By H. N. BRAILSFORD 

Two hundred years ago the Abbe de Saint-Pierre 
was completing the publication of his " Plan of 
Perpetual Peace." With cynical punctuality the 
European Powers have celebrated each centenary 
of its appearance with a universal war. Not all 
our humiliation before this spectacle can blind us to 
the fact that these centuries have brought with 
them some developments favourable to an enduring 
peace. The rise of national States has set limits 
to the arbitrary extension of kingdoms by conquest, 
marriage, or inheritance. The growth of self- 
government has introduced the factor of the popular 
will as a barrier against artificial wars of intrigue. 
The development of political morals has reached 
a point at which none of the greater civilized 
peoples will to-day avow that it is engaged, or 
ever could engage, in a wantonly aggressive war. 
This last safeguard seems of little practical worth, 
as we listen to the arguments which even Socialists 
in opposite camps have put forward to prove that 
their motive in supporting this war was purely 
defensive. Yet to doubt the sincerity of the con- 
viction which has animated every European army 



ISO THE ORGANIZATION OF PEACE 

in this war, that it is fighting for national security, 
would be to despair of the future of mankind. 
Fallible and liable to sophistication as this general 
instinct against aggression is, it is the only foun- 
dation on which the reformer can build. On the 
last Sunday of peace we saw the German Socialists 
crowding to mass meetings to protest against the 
thought of war. A week later the same men in 
uniform were marching dutifully towards the 
Belgian frontier. They had in the interval acquired 
the conviction that the Fatherland was threatened. 
No scheme, no treaty, no mechanism, if peoples 
desired war, would ever prevent it. But mechanism 
may have a function, if it can so illuminate the 
attitude of parties to a dispute that peoples will not 
again err so tragically in judging the question 
whether their rulers are embarking on aggression. 
Our difficulty to-day is not merely to prevent 
aggression : it is first of all to detect it. 

If our problem be to utilize this general condem- 
nation of aggression in the abstract, our first step 
must be to discover some test by which aggression 
can be distinguished from defence. The crude test 
" Which side first declared Avar? " is not decisive. 
Few neutrals held that the Boers were the aggres- 
sors in 1899, though Mr. Kruger, for strategic 
reasons, was the first to declare war. The alter- 
native test, on which German public opinion laid 
stress in this war, " Which side first ordered a 
general mobilization? " is not more conclusive. 
The belligerent who seems the more correct in 
the last stages of a crisis may none the less 
have been on the whole the more exacting in 



THE ORGANIZATION OF PEACE 151 

his diplomacy, and may have manoeuvred his oppo- 
nent into mobilization or a declaration of war. 
More puzzling still is the discrepancy between 
the legal and moral conceptions of aggression. 
The legal standpoint regards that Power as the 
aggressor who attempts by force to make a change 
in the status quo. The status quo may, none the 
less, be morally indefensible. The Balkan States 
were legally the aggressors in their attack on 
Turkey in 1 9 1 2, but the Turkish oppression of 
their kinsmen was itself a prior aggression. In 
its efforts to conserve peace, diplomacy has always 
tended, more or less consciously, to set before 
itself as its objective the maintenance of the status 
quo. The presumption was always against the 
Power which attempted to disturb the existing 
order. The existing order might have come about 
as the result of successful aggression in the past ; 
it might consecrate countless wrongs in the present ; 
but a certain sanctity none the less belonged 
to it, because it was embodied in treaties and 
recognized by Governments. The conception is 
not wholly without value, and it has been, like all 
conservative institutions, the salutary check to rash 
ambitions and reckless disturbance. It breaks 
down whenever a nation, oppressed by some 
genuine grievance, or inspired by some proper 
ambition, feels that it has at last the means of 
making its claim good by force. Its prime error 
is that it allows no place in the common life of 
nations for radical changes and large reconstruc- 
tions. A satisfied Power, which sees all its kinsmen 
free within its own frontiers, which enjoys full 



152 THE ORGANIZATION OF PEACE 

liberty to trade, and has in a vast Empire all the 
scope for economic expansion and emigration which 
it can fairly desire, is always apt to conceive 
of peace in this conservative sense. Desiring no 
great changes in its own interest, it regards nations 
which do experience some imperative need of 
change as disturbers of the world's peace. The 
consequence of a timid diplomatic tradition, rein- 
forced by the conservative interests of the satisfied 
Powers, is that peace has always seemed to be 
a condition of passivity and rest. The structure 
of Europe has been, with rare exceptions, so 
inelastic, so dangerously rigid, that no consider- 
able change could take place without war or the 
imminent risk of war. Through decades or genera- 
tions of peace nations grow, their trade expands, 
their problems multiply ; grievances accumulate, 
and unsatisfied ambitions develop an explosive 
violence. With the outbreak of war frontiers 
become fluid, and there is no change which vic- 
torious force cannot propose to itself. A whole 
library of books and pamphlets written since this 
war began outlines the vast series of changes 
which public opinion in the belligerent countries 
desires, and in vain desired before the war. If 
we were to eliminate from these programmes 
all that is extravagant and egoistic, there would 
remain salutary changes enough to transform the 
map of Europe and rewrite its public law. After 
fear, it is the pressure of this need of changes, un- 
realizable during peace, which forces war. Leibnitz 
said of the Abbe de Saint- Pierre's scheme, based as 
it was on an eternal status quo, that " perpetual 



THE ORGANIZATION OF PEACE 153 

peace " is a motto appropriate only to a graveyard. 
The fundamental vice in the structure of Europe has 
been that it has never known how to provide 
for large changes without war. We must beware, 
then, of seeking our criterion of aggression in a 
disposition to disturb the established order or 
upset the status quo. If large organic changes 
must always be postponed till " the next war," there 
can be no enduring peace. If we dwell too simply 
on the single purpose of preventing war, we may 
drift insensibly into a conservative organization 
which would stereotype abuses, delay salutary 
changes, and repress the most vital political and 
economic movements of our time. Our problem 
must be, not merely to prevent war, but to secure 
such an organization of Europe that large inter- 
national changes may be compassed without war. 
We have seen that there exists at present no 
ready-made standard which a democracy, informed 
by goodwill and possessed of some measure of 
power, can apply to distinguish an aggressive from 
a defensive war. Where, then, shall we find our 
criterion? It must lie in some appeal from the 
interested judgment of each people in its own cause 
to the verdict of some calmer corporate conscience, 
which will reach its conclusions under the guidance 
of a view of the common good. What its organ 
in each case should be — a tribunal, a mediator, 
or a common council of Europe — we need not at 
once discuss. The principle is not new^, but it 
is far from having secured general assent. No 
nation or Government entirely disavows it, but 
few have yet given it their firm adherence. It 



154 THE ORGANIZATION OF PEACE 

underlies the eagerness, as marked on the German 
as on the Allied side in this war, to secure a favour- 
able verdict from neutrals on their policy. Every 
nation, including Germany, has in the past sub- 
mitted grave disputes of a justiciable kind to 
the arbitration of an international court, and an 
advance by which all Governments would bind 
themselves to submit all disputes of this limited 
class to arbitration is not only conceivable but 
probable. It is not such disputes, however, which 
commonly lead to war, and if they should do so, 
it would only be because they were seized upon 
as a pretext which concealed a much larger issue. 
No civilized State can afford to make war over 
the interpretation of the wording of a treaty, over 
a boundary dispute, or over questions of financial 
compensation arising out of wrongs done to their 
citizens abroad. It is when a dispute transcends 
the scope of any question which can be submitted 
to a merely legal settlement that the risk of war 
arises, and a reluctance to accept or even to invite 
the formal opinion of some neutral body makes 
itself felt. Recent experience is not encouraging. 
France submitted her claim to a privileged position 
in Morocco to a conference of all the Powers, but 
it cannot be said that she was scrupulous in 
observing its decisions. Austria, with German 
backing, refused a conference to sanction her 
annexation of Bosnia. Sir Edward Grey's proposal 
to submit the dispute between Austria and Serbia 
to the mediation of the four disinterested Powers 
was decisively rejected by the German Chancellor, 
and his rejection was conveyed in a trenchant form 



THE ORGANIZATION OF PEACE 155 

which seemed to imply a dislike of the principle 
underlying any such procedure. He would hear 
nothing of an " Areopagus " ; he would not 
summon his ally before a " court " ; he seemed 
to imply that it was beneath the dignity of a 
Great Power to allow the interference of others, 
even in its external affairs. This attitude is no 
new pose in diplomacy. It has been the common 
form of conservative statesmen, and we may find 
an echo of it in Canning's motto : " Every nation 
for itself, and God for us all." There was some- 
thing to be said for this attitude in Canning's 
day. Europe remained through the greater part 
of the nineteenth century a collection of isolated 
sovereign States. Alliances were never permanent, 
and were rarely contracted save for some limited 
purpose or for a single war. Our own generation 
has witnessed the growth of the permanent alli- 
ance, a combination formed not merely for war but 
for the normal conduct of diplomacy, and for trade 
and finance as well as for war. " Each for him- 
self " is a motto which no longer answers to the 
facts. /Europe consists no longer of six Great 
Powers^ and some minor States, but of two great 
groups which tend to draw the minor States within 
their orbit. These groups persist in peace no less 
than in war, and it is easier to conceive of their 
amalgamation into a single loosely knit league 
than to imagine, their dissolution into their 
elements. In the old days it was possible for 
two Governments engaged in a dispute to reject 
the meddling of other Governments as an imperti- 
nence. At the worst they would fight out their 



156 THE ORGANIZATION OF PEACE 

quarrel between themselves ; the conflagration 
could be " localized," and with reasonable prudence 
no one else need fear that his house would blaze. 
To-day the links are so close that almost any war 
involving a Great Power must be a universal war. 
The affectation which resents the interference in 
a dispute of Powers which must presently be forced 
by their engagements to take part in it, is an 
unreasoning arrogance. The alternative to 
Areopagus is Armageddon, and the Powers which 
will not meet in council are only too likely to 
meet upon the battlefield. 

The new organization of the impartial conscience, 
whatever it is, must be permanent. It is possible 
that the attempt to secure the reference of the 
Bosnian and Serbian questions to a conference 
failed precisely because the machinery of such 
a conference had to be improvised. It was possible 
for a conservative Austrian or German statesman 
to argue that some loss of prestige might be in- 
volved in going before a conference, because this 
procedure is still exceptional, and because if he 
yielded on this occasion, he had no security that 
other Powers would do so when his own interests 
might require this method of settlement. There 
may be wide differences of opinion as to what 
form the standing council should take, and with 
what powers it should be invested. It is probably 
hopeless to expect at first an agreement in advance 
from all the Powers to abide by its decisions. 
The tradition of the sovereign State, bound by no 
laws but its own supreme self-interest, will die 
hard. The minimum at which we must aim, and 



THE ORGANIZATION OF PEACE 157 

without which nothing appreciable will have been 
won, is an agreement that every Power will consent 
to submit every threatening dispute to the study 
of a standing council, and to refrain from war 
until its recommendations have been issued. If 
to this were added the much less controversial 
agreement to refer the narrower category of 
justiciable disputes to the arbitration of an inter- 
national legal tribunal, we should have gained the 
objective criterion which we are seeking. The 
Power which broke its agreement to have recourse 
to the standing council, or declared war before its 
recommendations had been issued, would stand 
condemned before its own people, its allies, and the 
world of neutrals. By a single test which would 
admit of no sophistication or special pleading, it 
would be convicted of wanton and lawless aggres- 
sion. If it should happen that the council issued 
recommendations which one party to the dispute 
refused to accept, the case would be only a little 
less clear. The party which rejected its recom- 
mendations would be guilty of flagrant aggression 
if it then went to war to enforce its own point of 
view. The other party, if it went to war to give 
effect to demands which had the sanction of the 
council, would be entitled to the sympathy, if not 
to the. active support, of the rest of the world. 
No one could say that it was in the wrong in press- 
ing its demands ; whether it did right to press a 
just demand to the point of war, would depend on 
the gravity and urgency of its grievance, and the 
extent of the risk which its action might involve 
to other peoples. 



158 THE ORGANIZATION OF PEACE 

The Europe in which we live is no longer a 
collection of isolated States ; it is a community 
knit by permanent alliances. A scheme of this 
kind must adapt itself to the existing structure 
of the Continent. On the eve of this war, Sir 
Edward Grey put forward what he described as 
a ''utopian" proposal (White Paper No. 101). 
It was that each of the two allied groups should 
guarantee the other against the aggression of any 
or all of its members. A verbal disavowal of 
aggressive intentions would add little to the real 
guarantees of peace, even if it were enshrined in 
such a formula as was proposed in Lord Haldane's 
negotiations of 191 2. This scheme for arbitration 
or conciliation gives us for the first time an 
objective test of aggression, and enables us by 
means of it to limit the scope of alliances to an 
honestly defensive purpose. Nearly all alliances 
are in form defensive only, but the vagueness 
of the distinction between aggression and defence 
renders this restriction of small value in practice. 
If this scheme were honestly adopted, it would 
involve the insertion in all treaties of alliance 
(if the system of alliances survives) of a clause 
which would free the contracting parties from 
any obligation to give aid to a partner who 
had refused to submit his case to arbitration or to 
the Council of Conciliation, or gone to war before 
the period of delay expired. To this condition 
it seems to me indispensable to add a clause can- 
celling the obligations of the alliance if either 
ally should become involved in hostilities by reason 
of his own refusal to accept the recommendations 



THE ORGANIZATION OF PEACE 159 

of the Council. The advantages gained by this 
plan are, therefore, (1) the gain of a period 
of delay in which public opinion, if it be 
pacific, can act ; (2) the registry in each 
dispute of an impartial recommendation for its 
settlement ; (3) the setting up of a clear 
objective standard, by which the citizens of a 
would-be belligerent Power might judge whether 
its Government were acting aggressively ; (4) the 
isolation of an aggressor, through the abandonment 
of his cause by his habitual allies. This last 
provision, as Europe is constituted to-day, would 
generally be decisive. It would mean that the 
aggressor would fight alone, while his victim could 
invoke the aid of allies. The agreement for delay, 
arbitration, and conciliation would be still more 
impressive if it further required all the signatory 
Powers to concert military and other measures 
I against any Power which broke it. 1 It is not, 
j however, proposed in this minimum scheme that 
any Power should bind itself in advance to accept 
or enforce the recommendations of the Council 
of Conciliation, or that it should sign away its 
abstract right to go to war if the process of 
conciliation has failed to bring about a settlement 
which it can accept. 

The real pivot of this moderate plan for the 
prevention of war is the period of delay, usually 
defined as one year from the date of the submission 



1 In describing the moderate minimum I have followed broadly 
a scheme of which a persuasive account will be found in Mr. 
Lowes Dickinson's "After the War" (Fifield, 6d). 



160 THE ORGANIZATION OF PEACE 

of a dispute to the council. No proposal which 
promises so much can be free from difficulties. 
The first obvious difficulty, for which provision 
must be made, is that some disputes arise from 
continuous injuries, so serious that they must be 
suspended while they are examined by a Court 
of Arbitration or a Council of Conciliation. No 
Power will wait a year for justice, if the offender 
continues to repeat his aggression or completes 
a wrong whose beginning was already an offence. 
The Court or Council must be always in being 
to issue a preliminary injunction, in urgent cases, 
before the question of principle is debated. 

Another difficulty turns on the change which 
might take place in the relative military prepared- 
ness of the disputants during the year of delay. 
An aggressive Power is commonly a well-armed 
Power. If it meditates a brutal use of force, 
it will usually have accumulated armaments and 
provided itself with allies. To ask it to wait for 
a year is in effect to deprive it of a great part 
of this advantage. Let us cherish no illusions about 
the easy realization of a scheme which to men of 
good will seems so eminently reasonable. The 
year of delay would frustrate the calculations by 
which militarist cliques and general staffs time 
the outbreak of disputes for the moment when 
their own strength is at its maximum and that 
of their adversary at its minimum. This handi- 
cap on military preparedness will be accepted only 
when every Power has consciously resolved to debar 
itself for the future from the speculative use of 
such advantages. Moderate as the scheme is, it 



THE ORGANIZATION OF PEACE 161 

exacts a complete breach with the tradition of 
militarism. The proposal originated in the 
Anglo-American Treaty, and it would work 
smoothly across the Atlantic between two cousinly 
Powers which have full confidence in each other. 
In a European dispute, we must prepare for some 
embarrassing possibilities. A year would enable 
us to improvise an army, while our opponent would 
increase his fleet. The unready Power would set 
to work to accumulate munitions and to build 
strategic railways. If it went still further, and 
started mobilization, the strain would become 
intense. American advocates of the scheme have 
laid stress on the psychological advantages of 
delay. Nerves would be calmed ; the press would 
grow weary of a protracted excitement, and war- 
like passions would be extinguished in boredom. 
\ iWould that happen on the Continent? Each day 
might bring its tale of the enemy's new gun, his 
giant airship, his invincible submarine, his hastily 
| laid railways, his intrigues to gain a Balkan ally, 
| and finally his stealthy mobilization. If, more- 
over, a legal state of war were declared (or in 
J our country the Defence of the Realm Act put 
in force), there would be an end of free discussion 
and a stifling of public opinion. It is clear that 
] the amount and kind of preparation which is allow- 
I able must be carefully defined in advance. To 
allow preparation would indirectly discourage heavy 
armaments in time of peace, and give an advantage 
to the unready, which is often, but not always, 
the more innocent and pacific Power. It would, 
however, place a heavy strain on the forbearance 

ii 



1 62 THE ORGANIZATION OF PEACE 

of the better prepared Power, usually the Power 
which is the more likely to defy the scheme, or 
even to reject it in advance. I confess that I 
do not myself clearly see the solution of this 
dilemma. The wiser course would be, I think, 
to forbid any new preparations in excess of those 
already publicly sanctioned by the Budgets of the 
Powers involved, and to forbid either mobilization 
or the declaration of a state of war. These 
prohibitions, if they did not extend to the whole 
year, might at least cover nine months of it. In 
calling attention to this difficulty, I am far from 
suggesting that it should deter us. We start from 
the belief that until war actually breaks out the 
party of good will is normally the stronger. It 
fails partly because it never has time, partly 
because it rarely knows the facts, and partly 
because it becomes unpopular by attempting to 
argue that the enemy is not wholly in the wrong. 
Give it a simple case to urge, with " Keep your 
Treaty and wait a year " for its single watchword, 
and it must carry the day, unless the conscience 
of its country be wholly perverted or crushed. 
To attempt a full discussion of the composition 
and procedure of the Council of Conciliation lies 
beyond the scope of this essay. These questions 
have been studied in minute detail by the Fabian 
Society, and its draft treaty for the establishment 
of a Council is full of good suggestions. 1 It is 
important to decide whether we aim at a European 
League or at a world-organization. There is 
1 See the Supplements to the New Statesman of July 10 and 17, 
I9I5- 



THE ORGANIZATION OF PEACE 163 

much to be said for the former ideal. Europe 
makes some approach to a common level of cul- 
ture and political development. It is a unity which 
has a meaning for the imagination and the 
emotions. To go far beyond the real ties of 
fraternity would be to make the League a formal 
and mechanical organization. No political unity will 
ever be real which is not felt. On the other hand, 
in spite of the Monroe doctrine, we should all wish 
to include the United States, and Japan is already 
within our political system. Most of the Great 
Powers are, moreover, World- Powers, and the 
friction between them arises often from extra- 
European questions. The Fabian Society's solution 
of a World-Council, which might on certain ques- 
tions divide into European and American chambers, 
sitting separately, is ingenious and promising. 
With it we may agree that the ancient fiction of 
the equality of sovereign States must be abandoned. 
The Council must be free to reach its decisions by a 
majority vote, and the voting power of each State 
must bear some relation to its real importance 
in the world. This detail leads us rapidly to a 
thorny question of principle. Is our Council to 
be a diplomatic congress, composed of delegates 
instructed by their Governments? 

On our answer to this question depends our 
ability to move away in this advance from 
the traditional methods of diplomacy. Those 
methods were well adapted to their end, the 
furtherance of the restricted interests of the 
national State. The success of our Council 
would depend, however, on its ability to face each 






164 THE ORGANIZATION OF PEACE 



question on its merits, and to keep in view the 
general good of the European Commonweal. If 
a dispute arises, say between Serbia and Bulgaria, 
we shall get no objective decision on its merits 
if the Russian and Austrian members of the Council 
view it primarily from the standpoint of Russian 
and Austrian interests, while the British, French, 
and German members feel bound to adopt the 
standpoint of their Allies. We desire the nearest 
approach to abstract justice, consistent with the 
general interests of the whole European com- 
munity. The diplomatic tradition starts from the 
maxim, Do lit des. A Council composed of 
diplomatists would hardly differ from such gather- 
ings as the Congress of Berlin, where everything 
went by barter. There would be no voting on 
merits, but rather an elaborate traffic in votes. 
Incorruptible himself, the typical diplomatist has 
been trained to think primarily of his own country's 
interest. In the end, before " justice " could be 
done to Serbia and Bulgaria, their patrons and 
friends would be offering " compensations " all 
round to secure support, and the question at stake 
would turn on the solution of a dozen outstanding 
issues unconnected with the Balkans. It is 
because statesmen know so well by what methods 
congresses are " worked " that they are reluctant 
to submit to their decisions. A Council of diplo- 
matists would fall at once into fixed groups, and 
a solution would be reached by the process of 
seducing some representative of a group from 
his habitual allegiance by the offer of considera- 
tions valuable to his country. An austere and 



THE ORGANIZATION OF PEACE 165 

high-principled Foreign Minister might set his face 
against such methods and impress his views upon 
his delegate, but if it were suspected that even 
one or two votes in a close contest had been 
turned by these practices, the recommendations 
of the Council would have lost all moral value. 
We may fairly invite a Power to submit its case 
to an impartial Council, capable of deciding a 
question on its merits. But no Power would 
submit to be outvoted if it knew that the majority 
against it had been composed of rival Powers, 
1 each of which voted with its eyes fixed on its 
own irrelevant ends. 

The middle course of nominating men of in- 
dividual distinction for a fixed term, who would 
not be expected to take their instructions from 
j their respective Foreign Ministers, meets this 
' difficulty in some measure. Everything would turn 
! on the character of individuals. Some would be 
firm, impartial, and independent, and would resist 
improper pressure. Others would be weak and 
pliable. Some Governments would send the ideal 
man, and trust him. Others would instinctively 
choose a man on whom they could rely to obey 
instructions, and the process of barter would go 
on behind his back. A Council so comprised would 
be a mixed body, but the average result of its 
work might be good. These nominees, however, 
would occupy a delicate position, and it could 
J never be certainly said that their decision repre- 
sented either the official view of Governments or 
the free view of peoples. It would be at the best 
the verdict of a very distinguished and venerable 

1 



166 THE ORGANIZATION OF PEACE 






body of typical individuals. That might serve our 
purpose admirably, if we aim chiefly at a com- 
mittee of conciliation for disputes. It would not 
serve so well if we wish our Council to act also as 
a legislative body. A Legislature must represent 
either governments or peoples. 

There is another possible solution, bolder and 
more difficult than either of the others. It is 
that we should attempt to create a Council which 
will represent, not the Governments but the 
peoples of Europe — an assembly which would be, 
in fact, a European Parliament. It might be 
elected on a basis of population, by the popular 
chamber of each national Parliament, on a system 
of proportional representation. If the British 
representation were fixed, for example, at ten 
members, these ten would reflect the divisions of 
opinion prevailing in the House of Commons. It 
would consist always of some Liberals, some Con- 
servatives, and at least one Socialist and one Irish 
Nationalist. On some questions it might be 
unanimous, but it would not always speak or vote 
as a united national delegation. In a Council 
so composed, natural groupings, based on opinion, 
would be formed across the lines of racial and 
national cleavage. The Council would not 
inevitably fall into a German-Austrian group 
struggling against a Franco-Russo-British group 
for the balancing votes of the smaller States. 
While a section, perhaps the majority, of each 
national group might follow on most questions 
a purely national policy, there would be, as time 
went on, some formation of true international 



THE ORGANIZATION OF PEACE 167 

parties. The Socialists would be the first to come 
together. A Progressive party would inevitably 
be formed for the extension and development of 
the federal idea. A Conservative party would be 
created as naturally to uphold the sovereign rights 
of the national State. Another natural line of 
division would be that of the Free Trade and Open 
Door tendency against the Protectionist and mono- 
polist tendency. Even if we suppose that the 
powers of the Council would at first be very 
limited, that its work would be watched with 
intense jealousy by the official custodians of 
national sovereignty, and that it could do little 
more than draft proposals and recommendations, 
which the sovereign national Governments would 
sometimes consider and often ignore, there would 
grow from the public debates of such a Council 
a real sense that Europe is a united society with 
problems, interests, and opinions which bind us 
all across our frontiers. The true solution of 
international strife is not to kill it by the boredom 
of a dull and secret procedure. It is, on the con- 
trary, to elevate it to an open, honourable, and 
profoundly interesting discussion of opinions. 
Instead of dreading international " disputes " as 
mere curses and dangers, we must learn to regard 
them as we think of our differences in domestic 
politics, as the very springs of movement and 
change, the proof that we are alive and are 
adapting ourselves to our environment. 

An elected Council would offer the natural 
solution of the main difficulty which confronts any 
advance towards international organization. So 



168 THE ORGANIZATION OF PEACE 

long as congresses and 1 councils represent only 
so many solid, impenetrable, isolated national 
States, so long as they reach' their decisions by 
bargain and barter behind the scenes, no Power 
will bow naturally or easily to their decisions, and 
certainly no Power will bind itself in advance to 
accept them. We must go behind " Powers " — 
the very word suggests nothing but parks of 
artillery, squadrons of battleships, and massed 
legions — to the populations which are capable of 
thought on other than nationalist lines. If a vote 
against Great Britain meant merely that Germany 
and Austria had " squared " the Scandinavian dele- 
gates and " compensated " the Balkan members, 
so as to create a factitious coalition against us, 
we might refuse to obey it, and rightly so. But if 
it meant that our advanced policy had been for 
the moment negatived by the caution of a mixed 
majority — a French Conservative voting with a 
German Clerical and a Russian Slavophil — should 
we feel the same sense of humiliation and injustice? 
If it meant that our conservatism on some issue 
had been overborne by the united Socialist vote, 
backed by French Radicals and the advanced parties 
of Norway and Holland, would we bow to the 
majority much more reluctantly than our Conserva- 
tives do when a Liberal majority is returned at 
home ? 

Another consideration tends to favour the 
creation of an elected Council. It is that problems 
of peace and war tend to hinge ever less on 
" disputes " between isolated Powers, and ever 
more on larger questions of world policy — colonial 



THE ORGANIZATION OF PEACE 169 

trade, the Open Door, the free use of straits and 
ports, the " freedom of the seas," and the immense 
issue whether backward but potentially wealthy 
regions are to be developed economically by the 
system of partition, monopoly, and concessions, 
or by a regulated international partnership, or by 
free competition. These are matters which call 
rather for a decision of principle than for the 
process of conciliation appropriate to narrower 
"disputes." We want for these purposes a 
standing Legislature, which can amend its own work 
from time to time, deal with details as they arise, 
and appoint its standing commissions to act 
administratively. The chief of its standing com- 
missions would be the Council of Conciliation, 
which might sit in private, to handle the delicate 
business of adjusting disputes between single 
Powers. Others might take over each department 
of legislation and administration as it became ripe 
for international control, until as the decades and 
generations passed, a loosely knit consultative 
Council might evolve into a federal Parliament. 
If this proposal be too bold a starting-point, we 
might urge that while Governments set up some 
Council of delegates or nominees more in keeping 
with the present tradition of inter-State intercourse, 
to serve as the responsible and authoritative organ 
of a nascent European Commonweal, there should 
also be formed, beside it, and even below it, an 
elected consultative chamber, free to debate in 
public, to suggest new policies and urgent changes, 
and to send up its recommendations to the supreme 
Council and the national Governments. It is not 



170 THE ORGANIZATION OF PEACE 

probable that Diplomatists will ever so far depart 
from the traditions of their craft as to propose 
the creation of an elected Council. It will come 
into being when Parliaments themselves take the 
initiative. No mechanism will ever give us per- 
petual peace. We shall have peace when Europe 
has developed an international mind. The prime 
value of an elected Council would be that it would 
give to this mind a corporate personality and an 
articulate voice. 

We must in all candour inquire, before we close 
this brief study, how far the moderate minimum 
of a Council of Conciliation, fortified only by an 
agreement to allow a year's delay before the out- 
break of war, would answer the requirement we have 
laid down. Would it give such a presumption that 
great and necessary changes may be effected with- 
out war, that Governments would refrain from the 
competitive armaments and the partisan alliances 
which are to-day the means of moulding the world 
to the will of the strong? Formally it offers no 
such security, for it is not proposed that Govern- 
ments should bind themselves in advance to accept 
the recommendations of the Council, nor that 
neutrals should constitute themselves its executive 
arm. The consequences of these limitations would 
be serious. In the first place, the temptation to 
arm, though it might be weakened, would not be 
removed. Secondly, it would be difficult to argue 
that alliances had lost their purpose, and there 
would still tend to be an inevitable grouping of 
Powers with a grievance or an ambition against 
those which opposed its redress or satisfaction. 



THE ORGANIZATION OF PEACE 171 

The understanding that alliances became invalid if 
the agreement for a delay to allow of arbitration 
or conciliation were broken would, indeed, tend to 
make them less absolute and less menacing. But 
in some degree we should still live in the atmo- 
sphere of the armed peace and the balance of 
power. In the third place, the Council, moving 
warily amid these dangers, and conscious that it 
possessed no means of overcoming the self-will 
of the disputants, would be chary of making recom- 
mendations which might be disregarded. Its 
recommendations would at first be timid ; they 
would bear an undesirable relation to the balance 
of military power, and would fall far below the 
requirements of ideal justice. Would it dare to 
touch the really dangerous grievances, the wrongs 
which at a perceptible rate accumulate the explo- 
sives of war? It could not, for example, safely 
propose for many years after this war to upset 
any of the arrangements of the final settlement 
favourable to the victors, however inequitable they 
might be. It would probably shrink from recom- 
mending a Great Power to carry out any difficult 
act of reparation or surrender, though it would 
be bound for its own credit to suggest some solu- 
tion which would ease the tension. If it dared not, 
for example, propose a surrender of territory, it 
might at least suggest the concession of autonomy 
to its inhabitants. These limitations are not an 
objection to the scheme, but they are a warning 
to us that the power of any mechanism to bring 
us within reach of objective justice, and to prepare 
large changes without recourse to arms, will grow 



172 THE ORGANIZATION OF PEACE 

only as we develop the international mind and 
equip it with the organs of an international 
Government. 1 

By what means can this evolution be hastened? 
It will, no doubt, be proposed that some League 
of Peace be formed with a definite military basis, 
which may back the claims of justice by an ever- 
ready force. Just in so far as such a league is 
partial, it must fail in its purpose. The Powers 
which do not enter it will combine against it, 
and they will have the sympathy and support of 
such minor States as dread the power of its 
members. A partial league which proposed to use 
force to back its ideals would soon reproduce 
the old divisions of Europe in a new form, and 
when it talked of enforcing peace and justice it 
would seem to those outside it that a facade of 
hypocrisy had been erected to mask the old fortress 
of the balance of power. The proverbial ques- 
tion would arise, Quis custodiet ipsos custodies? 
A, B, C, and D form such a coalition, while E and 
F remain outside it. The day comes — for all of us 
may err — when D contemplates or perpetrates a 
wrong against some weaker State. Will A, B, and 
C then proceed to coerce D? D, in such an emer- 
gency, would instantly ally himself with E and F, 
and the choice for A, B, and C would either be 
to renew the general war, or to abandon the moral 

1 The general case for an advance to a federal organization 
and for a scheme of conciliation, stiffened by an authority 
which can impose decisions, is stated with compelling force in 
Mr. J. A. Hobson's " Towards International Government " 
(George Allen & Unwin, 2s. 6d.). 



THE ORGANIZATION OF PEACE 173 

basis of their league. It would be wiser to leave 
our rudimentary organ of justice without organized 
military support than to create behind it a league 
which involved the exclusion of any of the greater 
European Powers. 

The true answer to these foreboding riddles 
is that every fresh advance in international 
organization, and especially the creation of 
economic ties, will help to make good the inevitable 
defects in any rudimentary mechanism of concilia- 
tion. The scheme of conciliation must not be 
allowed to stand for long as the sole link between 
rival and isolated Powers. If the league which 
has accepted this principle could be evolved into 
a commonwealth, which conferred great and evident 
benefits upon its members, a new motive would 
be forged which might be used to secure obedi- 
ence for its decisions. By force we shall never 
constitute a true league, and any voluntary associa- 
tion of nations must admit the right to secede. 
If membership conferred certain measurable 
advantages, secession from it would be difficult, 
and the league, as it grew strong, would be able 
to lay down the principle that any failure to 
observe the decisions of its council involved seces- 
sion and the forfeiture of its privileges. 1 What 
these privileges might be, it is easy to suggest 
in outline. The ideal arrangement would be a 
league which translated its political unity into a 
system of Free Trade confined to its own members, 

1 I have attempted a sketch of a league with such an economic 
basis in the new chapters of the third edition of "The War 
of Steel and Gold " (Bell, 2s.). 



174 THE ORGANIZATION OF PEACE 

while it maintained an appreciable but not neces- 
sarily prohibitive tariff against the imports of 
outsiders. If any disloyalty to its political con- 
stitution automatically entailed secession, and 
exposed the seceder to the higher tariff, its 
decisions would have a powerful sanction behind 
them. This ideal may be remote, but some ap- 
proach to it may be possible. If the league 
could not at first construct a true Customs 
Union, insuring to its members full Free 
Trade within all its territories, we might begin 
with an agreement to accord to all its members the 
benefit of a " most-favoured-nation " clause ; this 
at least would put an end to tariff wars within 
it. We might go on to arrange for the abolition 
of differential tariffs in non-self-governing colonies ; 
a reform which would go far to remove any motive 
to the forcible acquisition of colonies, for if I 
may freely trade with my neighbour's colony, I 
shall not desire to conquer it. We might next 
arrange that members of the league should 
accord to each other such freedom of access to 
their money markets as allies commonly concede 
to each other, and perhaps a guaranteed propor- 
tional share for the capital of members in big inter- 
national undertakings in Africa, Turkey, and China. 
Only by some arrangement of this kind shall 
we be able to turn the flank of the capitalistic 
Imperialism which fosters Militarism for its own 
economic ends. 

It has often been proposed that a trade boycott 
or complete non-intercourse should take the place 
of war as a means of putting pressure on an 






THE ORGANIZATION OF PEACE 175 

aggressive Power. Such methods, effective in 
themselves, could with difficulty be organized or 
enforced by States which in normal times were 
bound by no close economic ties. To apply them 
would require an effort so violent, and would seem 
to the offender an outrage so extreme, that they 
might rather provoke war than prevent it. A 
league accustomed in times of peace to differentiate 
in its tariffs between members and non-members, 
and to make economic advantage the token of 
its political unity, might use this method smoothly 
yet with deadly effect. It is an axiom that the 
closer our international organization becomes, the 
more firmly and the more boldly will it venture to 
use its authority. 1 

It would be idle to attempt to sketch a detailed 
programme for the future, or to speculate on the 
pace of our advance. We do not know in what 
mood Europe will look around it and face its 

I problems when the havoc of this war is ended. 
It may be so wearied, so anaemic, so riven by 

: hatreds, so robbed of hope or energy, that any 
forward step, however timid, will demand our 

J utmost efforts, and our strength will be spent rather 

1 These proposals must be carefully distinguished from the 

suggestion which is now being put forward in all the allied 

1 countries, that the Allies should, after this war, combine to 

1 exclude or penalize German trade. That suggestion is merely 

I punitive and vindictive, or else it is a sentimental disguise for a 

crude trading egoism. Apart from economic objections, no 

plan would so surely perpetuate hate. The suggestion in these 

! pages is that the economic weapon should be used impartially, 

not to satisfy resentment for the past, but to ensure peace for 

the future. 



176 THE ORGANIZATION OF PEACE 

in resisting a desperate recoil into barbarism and 
reaction. It is also conceivable that our experi- 
ences may beget a revolutionary temper, which will 
first in certain countries break down the internal 
obstacles to change, and then sweep forward with 
a new impetus towards a bold international recon- 
struction and a sharp breach with the intolerable 
past. At the worst we shall have before us at least 
a ten years' truce of exhaustion in which to raise 
our barrier against the next outbreak of folly. 
The first test of the resolve of a new Europe for 
enduring peace will be the ability of its peoples 
to impose on their Governments a preliminary 
agreement to accord a year's delay for conciliation 
before they fight. The Government which concedes 
so much will have turned its back upon the past 
and broken the spell of centuries dominated by 
force. Without this indispensable foundation we 
shall build in vain. On it a new Europe, inspired 
by so great an act of faith, might with confidence 
erect by gradual stages and logical extensions the 
firm structure of a federal league. 



DEMOCRACY 
AND 

PUBLICITY IN 
FOREIGN AFFAIRS 



12 m 



DEMOCRACY AND PUBLICITY IN 
FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

By PHILIP SNOWDEN, M.P. 

The Great War will have been fought in vain if 
it has not taught the working classes of Europe 
the paramount necessity of publicity in foreign 
affairs. When the multi-coloured books contain- 
ing such notes and dispatches as it has suited the 
several Governments to give to the world have 
been exhausted in the effort to apportion the re- 
sponsibility for the war, the conviction must be 
s 'left upon the mind of every impartial person that 
a system of diplomacy carried on in secret is an 
anachronism in an age when democratic govern- 
ment is, in every country in Europe, acknowledged, 
more or less, to be a sound principle for the control 
of domestic politics. 

Unless it can be shown that there is something 
in the nature of foreign affairs which distinguishes 
them so radically from domestic politics that the 
accepted principles of national government are 
quite inapplicable to the control of foreign policy, 
then the present system of conducting foreign 
affairs stands condemned. But an examination 
of the arguments advanced against the popular 



179 



180 DEMOCRACY AND PUBLICITY 

control of foreign policy reveals the fact that they 
are precisely the same as those which have been 
invariably employed against every demand for the 
extension of political liberty and the enfranchise- 
ment of the people. 

The case for the popular control of domestic 
policy can be stated in a simple but sufficient 
phrase. It is that every citizen of a State has a 
right to a voice in determining the extent of and 
the form in which the State shall interfere with 
his personal liberty. In these days the formula of 
democracy cannot be fully expressed in the old 
phrase, " Taxation without representation is 
tyranny." Every year the State interferes more 
and more with the life of the individual. It 
regulates his conditions of work, his business, his 
wages, his housing, his education, and disposes of 
an ever-increasingi proportion of his personal 
property. Nobody publicly suggests nowadays that 
we should revert to the old political system under 
which the disposal and direction of the lives and 
liberties of the people was in the hands of a king 1 
or aristocracy. Because the acts of Government 
and Parliament affect the condition of the people 
it is an uncontroverted doctrine that the people 
should control the political affairs of the nation. 

With the object-lesson of this war before the 
eyes of the nation the concern of the people in 
foreign affairs needs neither emphasis nor expo- 
sition. We see the lives of the people sacrificed 
by hundreds of thousands ; taxation is being im- 
posed upon all classes to an extent which seems 
likely to be a heavy, if not intolerable, burden 



IN FOREIGN AFFAIRS 181 

upon them ; we see, perhaps for our lifetime, the 
high hopes we had entertained of a great social 
reconstruction dissipated ; we see the wealth and 
energy which should have been devoted to dealing 
with the problems of child life, of education, of 
public health, of unemployment, of housing, and 
with all those industrial and social evils in our 
land, devoted to the destruction of life and treasure 
on a scale so vast that the imagination reels before 
the spectacle. This surely is the concern of the 
masses of the people. 

The war is the outcome of foreign policy. We 
are not concerned here to apportion the blame or 
the responsibility. The war is the failure of 
diplomacy. It may be the fault of German, 
or French, or Russian, or Austrian, or British 
diplomacy, or of all in some measure. The system 
of secret diplomacy, the divorcement of democracy 
from the control of foreign affairs, is common to 
all European countries. The war is indisputable 
proof that this system of diplomacy has failed to 
maintain peace. It may, of course, be argued 
that any system of diplomacy or of the conduct of 
foreign affairs would not prevent war. But the 
first answer to that assertion is that this system 
has failed, and that the result of that failure is 
a calamity so colossal that no other system of 
diplomacy could be more disastrous. 

Two conclusions, therefore, must be accepted — 
namely, that the results of foreign policy are of the 
most serious concern to the people of every country, 
and that whether it be possible or not to devise 
some system of foreign policy and of the conduct 



182 DEMOCRACY AND PUBLICITY 

of foreign affairs which will prevent or lessen the 
disastrous results of international policy with which 
we are now painfully familiar, the present method 
is a failure. The failure of the present system 
of diplomacy justifies us in not only considering", 
but in demanding, some change in the control of 
foreign affairs. 

The conduct of foreign affairs, in all European 
countries, has, up to the present, been in the hands 
of a small body of diplomatists, rulers, and 
ministers. Neither Parliament nor the people 
know what is going on in the secret chambers of 
diplomacy. The nations are committed to the 
most serious obligations without their knowledge. 
The whole history of foreign affairs consists of 
policies adopted, treaties arranged, and wars 
undertaken without the previous knowledge of the 
people so vitally concerned. In 1 9 1 1 we were 
on the brink of war with Germany over the 
Morocco question. If war had actually broken 
out, there were not at that time a hundred people 
in England who would have known what it was 
about. That crisis was due to the intrigues of 
a number of European Governments, pressed on 
by financial interests, to get free hands for the 
exploitation of certain parts of Northern Africa. 
Treaties were concluded, the terms of which were 
published ; but now we know that secret treaties 
were in existence which committed some of the 
signatories to an aggressive policy directly opposed 
to that to which they had openly pledged their 
word. 

In 191 2 the most important negotiations were 



IN FOREIGN AFFAIRS 183 

going on between this country and Germany, with 
the object of improving the relations between the 
two countries. Of these negotiations the British 
Parliament and the British nation were kept in 
ignorance, and only bit by bit, under the strongest 
pressure, have the people been partially informed, 
three years later, of what took place. When, in 
March 191 5, the Prime Minister was asked in the 
House of Commons to put the country in posses- 
sion of the full facts, he replied that " no public 
advantage would be served by the publication of 
the notes and dispatches " bearing on these vital 
matters. 

Such a method of conducting the foreign affairs 
of a country is pure autocracy. It places the 
destinies of a nation, the lives of the people, the 
hopes and welfare of the democracy entirely at 
the mercy of a small handful of persons. These 
persons have the power to thwart all the aims of 
the democracy in the sphere of domestic reform. 
So long as such a power is in the hands of a few 
persons democratic government is a mockery, and 
the working classes are the playthings of rulers 
and diplomatists. It is a monstrous thing that a 
score of European diplomatists and rulers should 
have the power to involve practically the whole 
of Europe in a devastating war. By such a 
system the nations of Europe are committed in 
secret to tremendous responsibilities, and when this 
system of diplomacy has brought the nations to 
the verge of war, the people are induced to support 
a war they have never wanted, and which they 
have not expected, by appeals to their fear, their 



1 84 DEMOCRACY AND PUBLICITY 

party loyalty, and their national patriotism. Demo- 
cratic government to be a reality must give to. the 
people control over such matters as treaty obliga- 
tions with foreign countries, and Parliament must 
be trusted with the final decision on such matters 
and with the supreme question of peace or war. 

The objections which are brought against the 
demand for publicity in foreign affairs are pre- 
cisely those which have done duty in every past 
campaign against the extension of the political 
franchise. It is said that the people do not under- 
stand foreign affairs ; that it is essential that such 
matters must be conducted by men of special 
knowledge and training. But experience of demo- 
cratic control of home affairs has falsified all the 
arguments and fears of the opponents of a popular 
franchise. It is not, of course, maintained that 
the democracy has risen to the full height of its 
responsibilities and opportunities. It has made 
many mistakes. It has often disappointed the 
hopes of ardent reformers. But with all its fail- 
ings and weaknesses democratic control of home 
affairs has been a vast improvement, from the 
point of view of national welfare, on the former 
system of aristocratic government. The people 
are slowly learning to understand and to use their 
power, and every decade shows an advance in 
the intelligence of the democratic vote. 

We are justified in feeling a very considerable 
amount of confidence that the system of demo- 
cratic control which has for two generations been 
the method for conducting our national affairs 
would, if applied to the control of foreign affairs, 



IN FOREIGN AFFAIRS 185 

be equally satisfactory. If the extension of the 
franchise has not altogether changed the character 
of parliamentary representation, it has changed 
the atmosphere and outlook of Parliament. In 
regard to home affairs the rights and wrongs of 
democracy have become the main subject-matter 
of political contention and of legislative effort. 
The point of view of the working classes receives 
a consideration in Parliament now which was not 
possible when the landed aristocracy shared with 
the plutocracy the control of national affairs. 

But as the control of foreign affairs is still in 
the hands of the same class which formerly 
monopolized all political 1 power, the conduct of 
foreign affairs and the personnel of the Diplo- 
matic Service have remained unchanged, and are 
still the preserve of the landed and privileged 
classes. The natural result of that system is that 
these affairs have not been conducted in the 
democratic interests, but in the interests of the 
same class whose evil control of home affairs gave 
rise to the great popular demands for the demo- 
cratic control of domestic politics. The popular 
control of home affairs has brought the democratic 
outlook and sympathy into legislation ; and, in 
like manner, the popular control of foreign affairs 
would change the character of diplomacy. It 
would be recognized that the people were the con- 
trolling authority, and the administrators would 
naturally try to represent the people's point of 
view, instead of that of the financial and com- 
mercial interests. If it were known by our states- 
men and diplomatists that the results of their diplo- 



1 86 DEMOCRACY AND PUBLICITY 

matic efforts were dependent for confirmation upon 
the approval of the popular representatives, they 
would strive to achieve such results as would be 
likely to secure that approval. In other words, 
diplomacy, knowing that democracy was its master, 
would endeavour to serve the interests of 
democracy. 

The question now arises for consideration 
whether democratic control of foreign affairs would 
insist upon a change, and whether it would 
earnestly pursue a policy for the establishment 
and maintenance of peaceful relations between 
nations. It would not be wise to dogmatize on 
this topic, but it is permissible to submit evidence 
which appears to give very strong support to the 
belief that democratic control of foreign affairs 
would tend towards the abolition of war. The 
breakdown of international socialism on the declara- 
tion of war was a grievous disappointment to those 
who had built high hopes on the growing soli- 
darity of the workers of the world. But a calm 
and fair consideration of all the circumstances 
leaves one with little reason to feel despondent, 
or to lose faith in internationalism. Great move- 
ments grow slowly. National prejudices are hard 
to kill. No great project ever succeeds at first. 
It is only after many failures that triumph comes. 
The international working-class movement was sub- 
jected to the greatest possible strain before it 
had grown strong enough to bear the test. But 
the true facts are now becoming known, and one 
may almost say that the matter which should cause 
surprise is not the failure of international socialism 



IN FOREIGN AFFAIRS 18; 

to prevent the war, but that in all the circumstances 
so much of the international spirit survived the 
terrible ordeal. 

The workers in all countries hate war. That 
they support wars is no disproof of that statement. 
The amazing absence of anything of the nature 
of jingoism among the people of this country 
during this war, the universal desire to see an end 
of the war on such conditions as will ensure a per- 
manent peace, show that the spirit of the democracy 
is not military but pacific. The democracy never 
support a war except for one or both of two 
reasons, namely, through fear, or to remove or 
avenge some real or alleged injustice. Since 
September 28, 1864, when the first International 
was formed in London, one of the primary objects 
of every international association of working men 
has been the promotion of international peace. 
The workers may be trusted to use their power 
and influence to prevent war because they know 
something of the terrible cost of war. They know 
they gain nothing by war. They realize that the 
common interests of the workers can be served 
only in the ways of peace. They know well that 
war and militarism are the instruments of capi- 
talism and exploitation. They know that war is the 
greatest enemy of social progress, for it divides 
the working classes of the different countries and 
distracts their attention from the prosecution of 
what the continental workers call the " class 
struggle " — that is, the battle for the economic 
emancipation of the wage-workers. 

The working classes object to war for other 



188 DEMOCRACY AND PUBLICITY 

reasons. They know from experience that a time 
of war is a period when the liberties they have 
won in times of peace are easily filched away. 
They know that the cost of war, wherever the 
taxes may be directly laid, falls with the heaviest 
weight upon them. They know that bad trade 
and hard times follow war, and that though indi- 
viduals may gain from war, they as a class, and 
the nation as a whole, are always the losers by it. 
The working classes, by instinct and by knowledge, 
are peaceful and opposed to war, and there is 
every reason to believe that their influence on 
foreign policy, so far as they might be able to 
exercise it, would be all in the direction of pro- 
moting peace and the establishment of good rela- 
tions between all nations. 

Though the instincts of the people are towards 
peace, it does not necessarily follow that, if there 
were publicity in the conduct of foreign affairs, 
there would be a greater likelihood of averting 
wars. But there are grounds for a reasonable 
supposition that such a result would ensue. Let 
us bear in mind the fact that secrecy in diplomacy 
has not prevented war. On the contrary, the 
policies which the rulers and diplomatists have 
pursued in recent years have brought about the 
Great War. If we agree with the popular view 
in this country that the Prussian militarists have 
for years been preparing for this war, it is cer- 
tain that the great Social-Democratic party in 
Germany were ignorant of that movement. On 
the other hand, if the people of Great Britain had 
been aware of the secret missions to foreign Courts 



IN FOREIGN AFFAIRS 189 

for the purpose of furthering a policy for the 
isolation of Germany, it is probable that public 
opinion in this country would not have approved 
such a policy. That this diplomatic policy was 
being pursued behind the backs of Parliament and 
the people was well known in the inner circles 
of the European Courts. After the mischief has 
been done, these truths have been permitted to 
come to the light. For instance, the Belgian 
Minister in London (Count de Lalaing), in a dis- 
patch to his Government dated May 24, 1907, 
said : " It is plain that official England is quietly 
pursuing a policy opposed to Germany and aimed 
at her isolation, and that King Edward has not 
hesitated to use his personal influence in the ser- 
vice of this scheme." 

Such a policy as that was bound to eventuate in 
war. If these facts had been known to Parlia- 
ment five years ago this war would never have taken 
place, for the danger of the policy of attempting 
to isolate Germany would have been realized, and 
before matters had developed to the point of hos- 
tilities the public opinion of Great Britain and 
Germany would have interfered. Similarly the 
secret mission of Lord Haldane to Berlin in 191 2 
failed because of its secrecy. The disclosures made 
by the German Chancellor and by Sir Edward 
Grey show that the margin of difference between 
the proposals of the two Governments was so small 
that if there had been an earnest desire on both 
sides to come to an agreement the difference could 
easily have been bridged. The secret knowledge 
and the suspicion in the minds of both parties — the 



igo DEMOCRACY AND PUBLICITY 

knowledge of the German Chancellor of the secret 
intrigues which for years had been going on 
between England, France, Russia, and Spain for 
the isolation of Germany, and the knowledge in 
Sir Edward Grey's mind of the secret understand- 
ing between this country and France — made it 
impossible for a satisfactory agreement to be 
reached. But if the final differences could have 
been submitted to the respective Parliaments, if 
the peoples of Germany and England, both anxious 
for friendly relations, could have been consulted, if 
in an atmosphere of peace these matters could 
have been discussed with full knowledge, it is 
as certain as day follows night that some basis 
would have been found for a friendly settle- 
ment. 

But even if that had not happened, the advan- 
tage of publicity would have been immense. If 
the negotiations had failed, plainly because Ger- 
many was determined to accept no agreement which 
would not give her a free hand against France 
and Russia, then the public in all European coun- 
tries would have known the real facts. If war 
was seen to be inevitable, our Government would 
have been in a far stronger position. Because 
they alone have been in possession of knowledge 
which they believed pointed to the possibility of 
war, they have been hampered in making the 
preparations for war. If it were the fact that 
the German fleet was being built to challenge 
the position of Great Britain and to attack this 
country, then the great increases in the Navy Vote 
of Great Britain during the last eight years might 



IN FOREIGN AFFAIRS 191 

have been justified. But because of the secrecy 
of foreign policies the Government were unable 
to justify their policy by a full statement of the 
facts. Secret diplomacy makes the conditions for 
war ; but where the control of finance is in the 
hands of Parliament, it prevents the Government 
from making the adequate preparations to sup- 
port the commitments of that secret policy. 

There is nothing in the nature of foreign affairs 
which renders the public discussion of them un- 
intelligible to the ordinary mind. If that were so, 
why have the various Governments of the belli- 
gerent States taken such trouble to provide the 
public with the notes and dispatches bearing ofci 
the war? The different Governments have based 
their case on the evidence of these books. They 
have appealed to the public to act as the jury 
on this evidence. The people, it appears, are con- 
sidered fit to form correct judgments after the 
mischief is done, but unfit to be consulted before. 
The matters with which foreign politics is con- 
cerned are no more difficult or subtle than many 
questions of domestic policy. The Unionist Party 
were at one time anxious that the electors of this 
country should vote directly on the question of 
Tariff Reform. That is one of the most abstruse 
and difficult social, economic, and political ques- 
tions, and the people who were to be asked by 
their votes to decide this issue are the same people 
who are not considered sufficiently enlightened to 
decide whether British foreign policy shall be used 
for, say, assisting to divide Europe into two rival 
and hostile combinations, or for establishing a 



192 DEMOCRACY AND PUBLICITY 

concert of nations acknowledging a code of inter- 
national law. 

A great advantage which would come from 
publicity in foreign affairs would be in the parlia- 
mentary and public discussion which would arise. 
This public discussion would have a three times 
blessed result. It would have a restraining influ- 
ence upon ministers and diplomats in the pre- 
liminary negotiations. The aloofness of foreign 
policy from parliamentary control and public dis- 
cussion must have the effect of making foreign 
ministers and diplomatists rather contemptuous of 
Parliament and people. It must subject them to a 
constant temptation to do things which they would 
not do if they knew that their action would come 
before a committee of Parliament and be subjected 
to criticism. It would put an end to the secret 
intrigues of financiers and armament interests to 
direct foreign policy. The second great benefit 
which publicity would confer would be that the 
discussion of questions of foreign relations would 
help to clear away mutual misunderstandings 
between nations, which are so often due to the 
suspicion which secrecy always encourages. This 
discussion would bring the peoples of the different 
nations more closely together, because no such 
discussion of international relations could take 
place without making plain the common interests 
of the workers. The third great benefit which 
would result would be the gradual education of 
the democracy in foreign politics, the expansion 
of their horizon, and the development of the inter- 
national spirit and outlook. iWhen the democracies 



IN FOREIGN AFFAIRS 193 

have the international spirit there will be no more 
wars. 

We come now to the practical proposals for 
giving effect to our demand for publicity in foreign 
affairs. Reform will have to be carried out in three 
quarters. Some form of parliamentary control 
over foreign affairs will have to be established ; 
the staffs of the Foreign Office and the Diplomatic 
Corps will have to be changed, and the relation of 
the Foreign Secretary to Parliament will have to 
be altered. The control of Parliament over foreign 
policy is now merely nominal. It is true that an 
opportunity is provided by means of questions in 
the House of Commons for obtaining information. 
But the Foreign Secretary withholds information 
altogether, or gives just as much as he thinks 
desirable. Members of Parliament are restricted 
in their access to sources of information about 
foreign affairs, owing to the secrecy with which 
diplomacy is conducted. In the matter of ques- 
tions dealing with home affairs the Member of 
Parliament is able, as a rule, to find out the actual 
facts for himself, and he then is in a position, by 
means of questions and supplementary questions, 
to meet the minister on fairly equal terms. But it 
is not so in regard to foreign affairs. A reference 
to the incident of the Japanese demands upon 
China in the spring of 1 9 1 5 will illustrate the 
difficulty of a Member of Parliament eliciting the 
facts by means of questions in the House of 
Commons. That was a matter in which the honour 
and the interests of Great Britain were seriously 
involved. But questions to the Foreign Secretary 

13 



194 DEMOCRACY AND PUBLICITY 

failed to elicit any information as to the nature 
of the Japanese demands, or the progress of the 
negotiations, or of the attitude which our Foreign 
Office had taken up. The Foreign Secretary 
pleaded that a copy of the Japanese Note to China 
had been given to him by Japan in confidence, and 
the terms could not be divulged. What that meant 
was that, though Great Britain was by treaty bound 
to maintain the integrity of China, Parliament was 
not entitled to know anything about the action 
which our ally was taking to destroy that in- 
tegrity. 

In addition to the opportunity afforded by ques- 
tions there is usually one day each session set 
apart for the discussion of foreign affairs. It is 
obviously impossible to adequately discuss such im- 
portant and varied subjects in one sitting of the 
House of Commons. In normal times the House 
of Commons is so fully occupied with domestic 
legislation that it might be difficult to afford time 
for frequent discussions on foreign affairs. But 
there would be no difficulty in allotting at least as 
much time for that purpose as is given to the 
discussion of the Navy and Army Votes. It would 
be useless, however, to give more time unless 
Parliament were kept constantly more closely in 
touch with what was being done by the Foreign 
Office. To provide that closer acquaintance with 
foreign policy, the establishment of a Committee 
of Foreign Affairs is desirable. This committee 
should be composed of members drawn from all 
the political parties in the House of Commons. 
In time, service on this committee would provide 



IN FOREIGN AFFAIRS 195 

a fair proportion of members who had acquired 
knowledge of this department, and who would be 
able to discuss these questions intelligently in the 
public debates in the House. Such a committee 
would not assume the responsibility which is now 
vested in the Foreign Secretary and the Cabinet. 
Its function would be to learn the facts and to 
act in an advisory capacity. 

But no extension of parliamentary control over 
foreign affairs would be effective if the character of 
the Diplomatic Service and the constitution of the 
Foreign Office remained unchanged. The staffs 
of both the Diplomatic Corps and the Foreign 
Office are recruited in the most undemocratic way, 
and the personnel are quite out of touch with 
present-day movements. The nomination for the 
examination for a Foreign Office clerkship and for 
a post in the Diplomatic Service rests with the 
Foreign Secretary. The candidates are drawn 
wholly from one social rank. Candidates for the 
Diplomatic Service must give an assurance that 
they are provided with a private income of not 
less than £400 a year. If appointed, they must 
serve abroad for two years without salary. This 
condition ensures that the men shall belong to 
the well-to-do class, and, as a matter of fact, the 
utmost care is taken that only young men of high 
social rank are selected. Of twenty recent appoint- 
ments one-half were peers or the sons of peers, and 
the remainder belonged to a social class scarcely 
less exalted. The Royal Commission on the Diplo- 
matic Service which reported in 19 14 said : 'The 
effect of this condition [the required minimum 



196 DEMOCRACY AND PUBLICITY 

private income of £400 a year] is to limit candida- 
ture to a narrow circle of society. We have been 
furnished by the Civil Service Commissioners with 
the educational antecedents of the successful com- 
petitors for attacheships in the years 1908-13 
inclusive. No fewer than twenty-five out of thirty- 
seven came from Eton, while all but a very small 
fraction had been educated at one or other of 
the expensive public schools. In only one case 
was any University other than Oxford or 
Cambridge represented. No further evidence is 
required to show the limiting effect of the present 
regulations upon the class of candidates from which 
the Diplomatic Corps is recruited." 

The two necessary qualifications for the Diplo- 
matic Service are social rank and the qualities 
which will make a diplomat acceptable in the 
society of the Court to which he is accredited. 
Men of this sort can have no knowledge of the 
great democratic movements which are rising in 
all countries, and which are forcing" on the attention 
of all Governments great social and economic 
questions. These men have been reared in a world 
apart from the actualities of the present day. They 
know nothing of the democratic or international 
spirit. It was quite consistent to have such people 
to conduct foreign affairs when Parliament was 
controlled by the same class. But to-day the 
Diplomatic Service and Foreign Office are ana- 
chronisms. The reform needed is to throw open 
these Services to young men of all classes qualified 
by education and character. Just as it is possible 
for the son of a poor man by the system of open 



IN FOREIGN AFFAIRS 197 

competition, with the help of public scholarships, to 
obtain an important post in the home Civil Service, 
so it must be made possible for such to enter the 
Diplomatic Service and the Foreign Office, and to 
bring the democratic outlook and sympathy into 
the conduct of international affairs. 

One oft-repeated objection to publicity in foreign 
affairs requires a word of comment. It is said 
that this reform is impossible unless all nations 
in diplomatic association simultaneously adopt the 
system, or that if this country alone did so it 
would be placed at a disadvantage in diplomacy. 
This is a reform which one country can adopt 
without waiting for a general agreement among 
the nations to do so. There can be no such secrecy 
as we desire to abolish unless all the parties 
conspire to preserve silence. The adoption of 
publicity in foreign affairs by England would bring 
to the light the dealings of other nations. The 
abolition of secrecy would no doubt place those at 
a disadvantage who desire to work in the dark 
because they fear the light and public opinion. 
If the aims of a nation's diplomacy are honest 
there is no reason why it should desire its move- 
ments to be covered by darkness. 

But this objection appears to arise from a mis- 
understanding of what is meant by publicity in 
foreign affairs. There is no proposal that all 
the negotiations between the nations shall be con- 
ducted openly, and that every note and dispatch 
shall be made known to the world. That is 
obviously neither possible nor desirable. What is 
meant is that there shall be established some form 



198 DEMOCRACY AND PUBLICITY 

of parliamentary control over foreign policy, that 
its general lines shall be directed by Parliament, 
and that no minister or Cabinet clique shall have 
the power to commit the word of honour of this 
country to any policy which has not been approved 
by Parliament, and which is not in accord with 
the general principles approved by the nation at 
a general election, and that the country shall 
know clearly how it stands in relation to other 
nations and what its obligations are. In other 
words, the abolition of secrecy in foreign affairs 
means that Parliament, which has now nominally 
the responsibility for foreign policy and war, shall 
be able to decide such matters with full know- 
ledge, instead of, as in the past, being called upon 
to make a hurried decision on a momentous 
question, like the voting of supplies for war, in 
ignorance of the causes which have led to such 
a situation, or when the country has been irre- 
vocably committed to war by the pledged word 
of its ministers. 

The powers vested in the Senate of the United 
States, under the American Constitution, for the 
control of foreign policy afford an example of 
a method of securing some measure of publicity 
and democratic control. The sanction of the 
Senate is required for the ratification of a Treaty, 
and as Lord Bryce writes in his " American Com- 
monwealth " (vol. i. p. 109): "Yet different as 
the circumstances of England are, the day may 
come when in England the question of limiting 
the present wide discretion of the executive in 
foreign affairs will have to be dealt with. The 



IN FOREIGN AFFAIRS 199 

example of the American Senate may then be 
cited, but there is this important difference between 
the two countries, that in England Parliament 
may dismiss ministers who have concluded a treaty 
which it disapproves, whereas in the United States 
a President, not being similarly removable by Con- 
gress, would be exempt from any control were 
the Senate not associated with him in the making 
of a treaty." 

The qualification which Lord Bryce adds to his 
statement that the example of America may be 
cited in support of a change in the method of 
conducting foreign relations by England has very 
little force in the face of recent experience. Par- 
liament may dismiss ministers who have been 
carrying out a foreign policy it disapproves, but 
the mischief cannot be undone, and the fact 
that Parliament is only permitted to know what 
ministers choose to tell makes it difficult or im- 
possible for it to arrive at a firm conclusion, 
and its uncertainty constitutes the security of the 
ministers. The example of the American method 
disposes of most of the theoretic objections to 
more publicity in foreign affairs, such as that 
foreign Powers will refuse to negotiate with a 
country except through ministers who have plenary 
powers, and that the country which has to submit 
draft treaties to a parliamentary body will be 
at a disadvantage in negotiation. The American 
method would not be applicable to this country 
in its precise form. Such a Second Chamber 
as we have in England, or such as we are likely 
to have, would not be a suitable body to exercise 



200 DEMOCRACY IN FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

control over foreign affairs. A Joint Committee 
of the two Chambers to consult and advise the 
minister, without relieving him of responsibility, 
would probably be a more useful body. To this 
body consideration of treaties might be referred, 
as they are to the American Senate, but the final 
confirmation of the treaty should rest with 
Parliament. The demand for publicity in foreign 
affairs is one phase of the age-long struggle for 
democratic liberty. It is a demand for the 
extension to the sphere of internationalism of the 
principle of popular government, which, whatever 
its weaknesses may be, is manifestly the only form 
of government possible with the advance of educa- 
tion and modern economic and social developments. 
The destinies of nations have been trusted to kings, 
nobles, and plutocrats, and they have each and 
all failed. We must now trust the people. 



THE 

DEMOCRATIC 

PRINCIPLE 

AND 

INTERNATIONAL 

RELATIONS 






THE DEMOCRATIC PRINCIPLE AND 
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 

By VERNON LEE 

It is not from any great belief in what is called 
" constructive policy " that I want our reader to 
think out some of the principles which should con- 
trol the international relations of democratic 
peoples. We do not know enough about the 
materials and the forces which will make up the 
Future for our ground plans and elevations to 
have much importance, except in so far as our 
wishes and efforts are themselves part of the stuff 
that Future is made of. But in some measure, at 
least, we know the Past, and even that prolonga- 
tion of the Past called the Present ; and our 
attitude to these, our desire to seek and avoid, 
are themselves one of the unknown and incal- 
culable Future's materials. What might we wish 
if we stood in the Future, felt as the Future, in 
short, were part of it? That is a useless ques- 
tion. But being ourselves part of the Future's 
seed, it is not unimportant what we think about 
our own Present, and especially our own Past. 
This Present tends, or we wish it to tend, 

towards a more and more democratic character. 

203 



204 THE DEMOCRATIC PRINCIPLE 

Whatever rriay have been the line of least resist- 
ance towards the greater good for the greater 
number in ages past, that of our own day is 
evidently the democratic one. We have come to 
realize that in our more evolved societies such 
increase of present prosperity as will not hamper, 
but further the increase thereof in the future, is, 
or tends at least to be, more and more along 
the lines of individuals and collectivities being 
responsible for their own welfare, instead of being, 
as in the days of Divine Right and Church 
Authority, subjected to the responsibility of others. 
To believe in democracy means to believe that 
however great the drawbacks of freedom to think 
and choose, however many the delusions attendant 
thereon, yet such freedom is educative, and its 
very failures and pitfalls make those failures and 
pitfalls less frequent ; whereas even the most 
successful regimes of authority place the people 
who benefit thereby at the mercy of accidents 
themselves have not been educated to control. This 
being the case, we may, I think, start from the 
premiss that in asking ourselves, What are the 
principles by which the relations of Nations and 
States are best guided? we may ask, What are 
the principles of international relations which are 
most consonant with the general principles of 
democracy? 

Foremost among these principles of democracy 
is hostility towards artificial privilege and 
monopoly. Our aversion to them is summed up 
under a sense of justice. We are offended, and 
more and more offended as we grow more ethically 



AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 205 

sensitive, by the sight of all avoidable inequality 
of chances. But besides this instinctive, and one 
might almost say this aesthetic, sense of fair play, 
there is beginning to accumulate in many of us 
a residue of experience telling us that artificial 
privileges and monopolies create confusion and 
deadlock ; bring about all manner of wasteful 
deviation and violent readjustment ; and jeopardize 
the power of human affairs to right themselves 
by mankind's instinctive shifting towards satis- 
faction and away from its reverse. The belief 
in freedom of thought, and the belief in freedom 
of trade, are not merely reasoned-out propositions 
which we can defend by argument ; they are also, 
to a considerable degree, accumulated residues of 
experience, habits of preference and action due 
to repeated, uncounted, and unnoticed experiences 
of analogous kind. We moderns believe in 
freedom in great measure intuitively, because we 
have adjusted ourselves to larger and larger doses 
thereof ; freedom, like justice, has become, apart 
from all analytic justification, something towards 
which we turn by what might be called our intel- 
lectual and emotional vital exchanges, as plants 
turn through their chemical and mechanical 
functions towards light and moisture. 

Considering therefore democracy, not as a con- 
| dition of affairs already existing, still less one 
1 having already existed, among men, but as a 
! principle deducible from certain tendencies realiz- 
t ing themselves partially at various times, and more 
and more dominant in our own, we have to ask 
in what manner such democratic tendencies are 



206 THE DEMOCRATIC PRINCIPLE 

affecting, and likely to affect, the relations of a 
Nation to other Nations, in other words, in what 
way democratic ideals make for Peace. 

The democratic principle, a principle de- 
duced from increasing practice and increas- 
ing that practice by its regulative application 
to it, may be roughly defined as that of consent 
as against compulsion ; agreement (with its 
correlate disagreement) as against obligatory 
authority ; and self -direction as against direction 
by others ; equality of judicial and civic rights 
being among the necessary guarantees of this 
threefold first principle. 

In other words, we may say that the democratic 
attitude is one of greater and greater respect for 
freedom of choice, a greater and greater belief 
in the tendency of variety to produce by mutual 
selection and adjustment an ever richer and more 
supple social harmony. Let us see the application 
of this principle to politics. Within the bounds 
of one nation it goes against every kind of 
artificial privilege and monopoly, since these 
diminish freedom of choice and substitute com- 
pulsion for choice. In foreign relations it is 
evident that our democratic preference for consent 
as against compulsion diminishes and abolishes all 
supposed rights by conquest. Once recognize that 
only the consent of a people can decide their 
nationality and government, and you put an end 
to the possibility of countries or provinces being 
kept against their will, as Trent is being 
kept by Austria, for reasons having no present 
sanction in the inhabitants' wishes, and still more 



AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 207 

so of those countries or provinces being transferred, 
except from their free will, from one nation or 
regime to another. The imposition of a Russian 
regime on Finland, although Finland is not a 
Russian conquest, is against the democratic 
principle as much as the annexation of Alsace- 
Lorraine by Germany. The secession of Norway 
from Sweden is perhaps the most hopeful practical 
recognition of this principle. In short, the 
democratic principle of consent versus compulsion, 
ipso facto, makes a country or province a portion 
of whatever country itself prefers. 

To say, as Bismarck did to the dissident Alsatian 

deputies, that Alsace-Lorraine had not been 

annexed for its own convenience and safety, but 

for the convenience and safety of Germany, was 

to treat Alsace-Lorraine in an undemocratic spirit : 

as a chattel, a material possession existing only 

for its possessor ; and it was the way, of course, 

to place that possessor himself in the light of a 

mere material obstacle which those he thus treated 

as chattels would shake off whenever feasible. On 

j the other hand, to say, as I have heard quite 

liberal-minded French people say of late, that 

J Alsace-Lorraine should be reunited to France 

without a plebiscite or other consultation of its 

h inhabitants' choice, because it is stolen goods and 

j stolen goods can be taken back without more ado 

liby their former proprietor, is to speak just as 

[jundemocratically as Bismarck spoke. It is, 

[a comically enough, to repeat verbatim the very 

[Jexcuse which Germany put forward in 187 1 for 

that annexation. The very essence of the demo- 



208 THE DEMOCRATIC PRINCIPLE 

cratic principle is to consider men and women 
as wills and not as chattels ; and the progress 
of democracy, as it implies a constant diminution 
of all possibility of exploiting individual men and 
women against their choice, implies also that in- 
habitants do not belong to territory but territory 
to inhabitants. To transfer a province is therefore 
as undemocratic as to sell a slave. Thus, as 
believers in the democratic principle, we are bound 
to give our sympathy to the people of the province 
of Trent when they declare their wish to be united 
to the kingdom of Italy. But we cannot respect 
the plea of the Italian Government, or even of 
the Italian nation, that the annexation of Trent 
is requisite for the military safety of their country 
or even for that equally self-regarding collective 
advantage which is called the satisfaction of their 
ideal aspirations. Neither is there much to be 
said, from the democratic point of view, in favour 
of the motives for which we British have held 
Ireland in a past which has not quite come to 
an end, and shall continue to hold sundry other 
places in the probable near future. But since 
hypocrisy is a tribute to the virtue (and one might 
add, to the wisdom, the self-command, and clear- 
sightedness) which the hypocrite has not got, so 
also the progress of democratic morality and policy 
is shown by the more and more frequent assump- 
tion either that a conquered country has called in 
its conqueror (this was a frequent fiction in 
Napoleon's time and also of the Holy Alliance 
which conquered him), or that a country so 
annexed is " protected " for its own good, is a 



AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 209 

ward of its master, and will, once grown out of 
childhood, understand and bless the restrictions 
and the chastisements which may have chafed its 
foolish immature will. 

I think it is clear from all the foregoing that 
the democratic principle absolutely rejects the 
notion of a military victory having " fruits." 
Such fruits of victory it calls by their real name 
of loot. No matter what sacrifices the victorious 
nation may have made or what risks it may have 
run, the democratic principle denies the right 
(which would sanction highway robbery and 
burglary) that the sacrifices and risks of Tom 
can be compensated by imposing sacrifices on 
Harry. 

If human beings are to be treated as human 
beings with wills like our own (and this, like all 
morality, is wisdom, and like all wisdom, is 
morality), and not, as was avowedly the case 
throughout Antiquity and the Middle Ages, as 
chattels, slaves, or creatures you could keep or kill 
at convenience, then wars are absurd, useless, ille- 
gitimate, unless undertaken either in self-defence 
(including self -liberation) or in defence of some 
weaker party. And indeed the theoretic accept- 
ance of this principle is shown in the present 
war, which each of the several belligerent Govern- 
ments proclaims, and each of the belligerent 
peoples sincerely accepts, as a war either of self- 
defence (Austria defending herself against the 
vicarious encroachments of Russia in the Balkans, 
Germany against the threat of Russia and Russia's 
allies, France defending herself against Germany) 

H 



210 THE DEMOCRATIC PRINCIPLE 

or of defence of some smaller State, as Russia de- 
fending Serbia, and England, Belgium. That they 
can all be right in their assertions and beliefs is 
impossible, and may lead some sceptics to guess 
that they may all be mistaken in various or equal 
degrees. But the universal certainty of each bel- 
ligerent about being a peaceful victim or chivalrous 
champion and his opponent an aggressive criminal, 
shows that though we are very far from acting 
upon democratic principles, as we are very far 
from practising Christianity, yet we have all of 
us explicitly or implicitly accepted those demo- 
cratic principles as the only ones consonant with 
a good opinion of ourselves and a respectful 
attitude on the part of our neighbours. 

In discussing these matters it is necessary to bear 
in mind that, as I set out with saying, we are 
at present dealing with democracy, not as any 
existing set of institutions but rather as a 
TENDENCY ; and a tendency which is the 
only one in political and social relations at all 
likely to increase and become more universal and 
organized, despite all obstacles and set-backs. For 
the very essence of democracy being the admission 
of greater and greater numbers to self-government, 
and consequently the better and better equipment 
(by education, institutions, and also by habit) for 
self-government, it is evident that methods of con- 
ciliation and co-operation must be perpetually on 
the increase, and methods of compulsion and one- 
sided exploitation on the decline. 

This democratic tendency towards adjustments 
more and more favourable to mutual advantage 






AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 211 

brings with! it the greater and greater equivalence 
of what, looked at from two opposite sides, we are 
accustomed to oppose to one another under the 
names of Expediency and Justice. For in a regime 
of increasing self-government and increasing 
equality of chances and of the training these bring 
with them, it becomes more and more expedient 
for one individual or group to behave towards 
other individuals or groups in such a manner that 
these will feel that they are justly treated — i.e. 
treated with such reciprocity that they could obtain 
greater individual or group advantage only by 
unjust treatment of other individuals or groups, 
that is to say by methods which, given a regime of 
increasing equality, would jeopardize the safety 
of the aggressors and become, therefore, inex- 
pedient to themselves. 

In fact, democratic progress may be defined as 
that which gives to the moral precept " Do unto 
others as you would be done to " a constantly 
increasing sanction of expediency, and thereby an 
automatic application. 

That such development must be slow and ex- 
posed to frequent set-backs (like that of this 
war) is merely another way of saying that in the 
present and future we have to pay the debts, and 
struggle with the difficulties, left by the Past, both 
in the way of habits of mind and of institutions. 
But although such progressive application of the 
democratic principle is slow and arduous (but con- 
stantly less slow and less arduous through the effect 
of its inherent tendency to conciliation and co- 
operative adjustment), yet such progressive ap plica- 



212 THE DEMOCRATIC PRINCIPLE 

tion of the democratic principle is not in the least 
chimerical ; since, it is, on the contrary, based 1 less 
and less upon self-sacrifice and more and more 
upon the self- regarding wisdom of consulting the 
wishes of others to whom self-government and 
equality give the power of impeding the accomplish- 
ment of one's own. 

Such higher expediency is, indeed, but an out- 
come of the practice of barter which is implicit 
in all democratic conceptions, that is to say, of 
voluntary giving what either party wants less for 
what either party wants more ; as opposed to 
extortion or rapine, by which one party obtains 
what it wants, but at the expense of the ill will 
of the other and a consequent loss to itself due 
to the necessity for coercion of the unwilling or 
vindictive loser. 

Perhaps what I have called the Democratic Prin- 
ciple (which we are now considering because it 
is opposed to the militaristic principle and is a 
main factor of Peace)— perhaps what I have called 
the Democratic Principle is no other than the prin- 
ciple of progress in the political and social sphere. 
Or, rather, perhaps we might say that what justifies 
democratic tendencies in our eyes is the belief that, 
in our times at least, they make for an increasing 
betterment of human conditions. And mark ! not 
merely a betterment of the present at the expense 
of the future, or a betterment of the future at the 
expense of the present (both of those are alter- 
nately promised us by militarism and all kinds of 
tyranny), but a ratio between the two, by which, 
neither being unduly sacrificed to the other, the 



AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 213 

betterment of the future is, on the contrary, one 
of the results of a betterment of the present. 
Such a ratio between proximate and ultimate 
advantage implies economy of resources. A great 
deal of the world's progress in the Past has auto- 
matically compassed itself by the survival of 
especially gifted and resistant minorities, but at 
the cost of destroying, not only the present welfare 
(and often the bare existence !) of less gifted 
majorities, but depriving the world of whatever 
could have been got by the co-operation of those 
majorities for whatever they were worth. Indeed, 
progress such as we see it in the Past may be 
compared to the Past's imperfect methods of ex- 
tracting the precious metals, by which a certain 
amount of them was of course secured in easily 
accessible grains or nuggets, but with the waste 
of enormous quantities of ore which required finer 
methods for its utilization. This is perhaps the 
reason why the history of Antiquity— and how much 
more the unrecorded history of primeval mankind 
as we guess it to have been ! — strikes us as a 
series of wreckages, civilization after civilization 
rising out of a process of devastation and isolation, 
to be itself overwhelmed (layer on layer of burned 
towns and broken potsherds as excavations are 
showing us !) by the barbarism it had repressed 
or excluded or ignored ; wreckage out of which 
only a minimum of human acquisitions was saved 
and handed on by the wreckers. Those ancient 
civilizations, submerged one after another with such 
colossal waste of acquisitions and possibilities, were, 
we should bear in mind, carried on mainly on the 



214 THE ^DEMOCRATIC PRINCIPLE 

principle of conquest, compulsion, and ruthless ex- 
ploitation of the adversary ; the vanquished being 
either exterminated, driven into worse territories, 
or made to toil for the victor either in actual 
slavery or by means of tribute depriving them of 
all but the barest subsistence, methods which 
can be studied in more recent times in our dealings 
with backward races. By these methods, as has 
been pointed out by various social philosophers, 
especially by J. M. Robertson, the potential pro- 
ductivity of the world was enormously diminished ; 
the victors often became, like the Romans, econo- 
mically parasitic on the vanquished, who, on the 
other hand, became less and less productive as 
a result of their tyrannical exploitation. 

Thus, adopting the phraseology of a recent 
Austrian biological sociologist, Rudolf Goldscheid, 
in his noble and suggestive " Menschen-Okonomie 
und Hoherentwicklung," one might say that the 
waste of Human Capital under the slave-holding 
and tribute-levying regimes of the Antique World 
is parallel to the waste, the destruction of natural 
resources, by the primitive husbandry which takes 
everything out of the soil and puts nothing in, 
which cuts down forests and never replants them, 
and thus reduces countries, as so many of the 
Mediterranean and Western Asiatic countries have 
really been reduced, to barren rock and malarious 
seaboard. 

The manufacturing and trading communities of 
the Middle Ages defrauded civilization to only a 
lesser degree by envious legislation, which trans- 
ferred the markets and industries of the vanquished 



AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 215 

to the victors, and surrounded, for instance, 
medieval Siena and Florence with what had once 
been prosperous townships, and now became 
decaying, sometimes fever- stricken villages like 
Tiutinnano d'Arbia and Sovana, or even mere 
barely identifiable sites, as in the case of Semifonti, 
which the Florentines razed to the ground, scatter- 
ing or absorbing its inhabitants. It was on the 
same plan of capturing alien trade that England 
ruined Ireland in much more recent times ; it is 
in the same spirit, and with the same amount 
of wisdom, that some of our contemporaries, even 
of those believing themselves to be democrats and 
reformers, are urging England to ruin, so far 
as is possible, whatever may remain of German in- 
dustry and commerce at the end of this war. 

I have given these instances lest the existence of 
certain forms of popular government should mislead 
us into imagining that the Democratic Principle 
of choice versus compulsion has been really recog- 
nized, let alone acted on, in the historic past. 
Democracy, in the most important sense we can 
attach to the word, is not a set of institutions. 
It is, I should again like to repeat, a tendency 
towards a particular mode of judging and acting, 
a tendency much more recent than we usually think, 
though of even vaster and more rapid growth. 
But the recognition of this comparative newness 
of such a democratic tendency, while obliging us 
to patience with its present imperfect realization, 
encourages us to wish and to strive for, as well 
as to expect, its less and less imperfect realization 
in times to come. And we thus obtain, not only 



216 THE DEMOCRATIC PRINCIPLE 

an aim for the future but, what I venture to con- 
sider as more important still, a criterion for the 
present ; since, in proportion as mankind slips 
out of its old notions of submission and dogma, it 
becomes more obedient to the notion of consistency 
and responsibility. The Democratic Principle that 
men ,and women are not things but wilts, and 
the democratic regime of reciprocal concession and 
mutual advantage, will therefore tend to realiza- 
tion no longer merely by such aggregate and 
automatic action as we sum up under the name of 
economic and historic forces, but also, and more 
and more, by the conscious and deliberate choice 
of every individual taken singly. Self-determina- 
tion is one of the aspects of the Democratic 
Principle. And self-determination will itself imply 
that the Democratic Principle must supersede the 
principle — if you can call it a principle ! — of which 
we see the crassest and most antiquated embodi- 
ment in the present attempt of each and every 
nation to establish security by violence and to 
vindicate liberty by brute compulsion ; in other 
words, to obtain the economic and moral bless- 
ings of peace by means of the economic ruin and 
the moral devastation of war. 



UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED. THE URESHAM PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON 

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